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Question: Romania has been shaken by collisions for a week now. In Bucharest they are becoming quite brutal. Our friends there are very worried. Overall, how should we view the suffering that the world experiences?
Answer: We must only disseminate materials about unity. And there are several rules in this regard:
– We do not mix with anyone;
– We are not “for” or “against”;
– As educators, we relate to people very considerately and unsophisticated.
That is how we approach the situation, according to the principle, “Love will cover all sins.” It is necessary to reach consensus, conciliation, unity. This does not mean that everyone calms down and goes home, since in that case we would be against the protestors. No, we are for change. However, in all of history, methods like this have never brought about anything good.
We have live examples before our eyes: Egypt, Tunisia, and other countries. For example, what was the use of the spontaneous disorders in London? This approach does not bring anything good to anyone. And Egypt has become immersed in devastation and is left with nothing. So, disorders won’t help.
That is why we have to release explanatory brochures with materials about mutual guarantee, including our advice: communication, round tables, and integral upbringing.
But first of all, we must concisely describe the current situation: Why is this happening?
And in doing so we do not speak out against the government or anyone else. We are talking about a natural process, a regular phase of our evolution where the world is becoming global and interconnected.
So what should we do? We have to adapt to the new conditions. After all, there is no other way to go. The integral network is already expressing itself. It’s simply that previously we adapted instinctively, whereas now we must reach harmony with the changed world consciously, with our own awareness. This is our new level of development.
Next, we have to explain how to do this: by means of integral upbringing, with the help of a good environment, which will convince every person of the need to unite with others.
Romania is a pretty homogenous country. It is not home to different cultures living side by side—it’s not America or the united Europe, so there it’s easier to talk about unity. This approach will appease the people, will revitalize the country, and will give people work. People will rise in their consciousness and will understand what is happening. They will see for themselves that this is good for them, their children, their country, and people.
As a whole, we are only inviting everyone to unite, and no more than that. There are no hidden “fees,” dirty tricks, or attempts to make money off of someone. On the contrary, let them do everything themselves. Let them organize the learning process and build an environment according to the laws of nature, while collaborating with psychologists.
This is what we have to offer, especially considering that there are many countries standing at the threshold of the same kind of strife.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/22/12, “Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot”
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Baal HaSulam, “The Inheritance of the Land”: Indeed it is said in the books that it is impossible for the souls to receive the good reward for which the Creator created them and the world, without the vessel prepared to receive, and a person cannot attain that vessel without exertion and the efforts to keep the Mitzvot; under pressure and war, a person fights with the evil inclination with many obstacles and concerns. The sorrow and exertion in the Torah provides a vessel for the soul so that it is ready to receive all the pleasure and goodness for which He created for the created beings.”
We can’t receive goodness and pleasure without hard work. Why? Because it is the hard work that stabilizes and builds the right desires in us for the fulfillment the Creator has prepared. It is impossible to manage without these desires, without the burden, without hard work and real sufferings. It is said: “You shall eat bread with salt, and drink water sparingly, sleep on the ground, live a life of sorrow, and in the Torah you shall work.” On the whole, all of humanity is going through a path of great sufferings, much worse than death.
Why does that happen? Why is it only in this way that we can clarify the deficiency that is aimed at the goal? Indeed, without acquiring this deficiency first, we will not feel the goal, and will not be incorporated in it. Perhaps we have already reached the goal but can’t feel it because we lack the experience.
So a lot of hard work is needed until we finally reach the leap, and it is revealed to us as the proper yearning. As we work, we make more and more efforts, and it becomes constantly harder to justify the way until we finally do not escape from Egypt. And the next step isn’t simple.
Kabbalists don’t hide this from us. On the contrary, they want to explain to us that our work is hard and that it is constantly growing harder. Don’t wait for everything to happen tomorrow, unless you are really able to add the wonderful tomorrow to the present. Here everything depends on you.
So we have to “keep the Torah and the Mitzvot,” which means to correct ourselves by drawing the reforming Light, whose influence connects us. The method of Kabbalah is meant to connect us. It is said: “I’ve created the evil inclination and I’ve created the Torah as a spice.” The Torah corrects the evil inclination, meaning the separation, and it corrects it by unity and love. So “Love thy neighbor as thyself” is the great rule of the Torah. We have to discover the hatred among us and the unity to correct it. We cannot escape it; we must unite as one.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/12, Baal HaSulam, “The Inheritance of the Land”
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Baal HaSulam, "Inheritance of the Land": And so Abraham wondered, “How will I know that I will inherit it?” meaning how will I know that the Children of Israel will receive such a great reward, since where will they get such big vessels that will be worthy of this wonderful receiving, and to this the Lord answered him, “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years, and then they will have great exertion in the Torah and the Mitzvot….” This is the case for those who deal with the Torah, but those that deal with the fillings of this world and are not ready to deal with the Torah, how will they receive these vessels? Indeed the answer is that this is what is said in the Midrash, that Israel are not redeemed until they are united…."
So we see that we must connect with the world that provides us its deficiencies because we don’t have enough deficiencies of our own. In the same way we received the desires of the Egyptians in the time of the Exodus from Egypt.
Let’s see how things developed. After the exodus from Babel we went down to Egypt, we were there for 210 years and we went to Mt. Sinai. Then there was a series of ascents and descents until we arrived at the Land of Israel and built the first Temple. Then we fell from that degree and built the second Temple.
Thus we ended the work of the Egyptian exile. We corrected the whole legacy of 210 years in Egypt, all the evil inclination, with the help of the Torah, meaning the method of Kabbalah, which we received on Mt. Sinai.
After having fulfilled this level, we fell, we have been through two thousand years of exile, and now we have to ascend again. It is said about our state that: “The children of Israel were exiled only to add the souls of the gentiles to them," which is all the Babylonians. In the past, Abraham took a small vessel of Israel out of Babel, and now all of Babel have to reach correction. Here, in exile, we meet the Babylonians, we are mutually incorporated in them and together with them rise to correction, as one body that has a "head" and a "body." The head is the point in the heart (*), and the body is what we call "the nations of the world (NW in the drawing)."
Thus we reach mutual correction. The body cannot manage without the head, and the head cannot manage without the body.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/12, Baal HaSulam, “The Inheritance of the Land”
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Question: Can I feel something towards the Creator without any fulfillment?
Answer: There cannot be a relationship between the “guest” and the “host” without fulfillment. If I totally restrict myself, I detach myself from receiving, but I cannot respond to the treatment of the Creator either. My relationship with Him is possible only through the fulfillment that I receive from Him.
If I receive from Him, from His huge table laden with delicacies, even “a tiny slice of cake,” in this cake I feel His attitude towards me. It is for this reason that I take it, after I restrict myself internally, in order to feel only His attitude towards me in that cake.
Otherwise I can’t perceive how He treats me. I feel love and concern in the Light that comes to me. Then I take a piece of that cake in order to feel all that, not to simply enjoy it since that would be a Klipa (shell), egoism, but rather in order to build my attitude towards the Creator from it, in order to reach equivalence of form with Him, in order to reach a state of balance. This state in nature is called homeostasis, harmony with nature.
If I am in such a state with respect to the Creator, a certain relationship is established between us. This means that I am already on some spiritual level: 1, 2, or 3….
But the question is: Where do we go from here? After all, this harmonious system relaxes me, and I cannot reveal more than I’ve already revealed. I received from the host, I gave back to him, we’ve established a relationship of equality between us, and through the refreshments we make each other feel good and bring each other pleasure. But what’s next?
If I don’t feel an additional deficiency, I won’t be able to move. What’s important is: What will I have a new deficiency for: the refreshments or for the host, for strengthening our relationship, for greater connection with Him?
Here, according to my preparation, a new deficiency is revealed in me. After all, I want to feel the deficiency for a stronger connection with the host. In order to discover the right deficiency for the host, I must have an appetite for the refreshments.
But it could be that the deficiency for the refreshments is revealed before the yearning for the host. Here it depends on if I approach the development from the side of sanctity or from the side of impurity.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/12, Shamati #174
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Question: What does a group that enters spirituality look like?
Answer: On the outside there are no special signs. Everyone seems like ordinary people. Inside will be everything we read about in the Kabbalah books. You will see the same faces, but you will treat them differently.
You will feel the internal network of connections among you. This is what creates the place where the spiritual world is revealed. It is as if you’ve received a flashlight, you turn it on, and in that light you begin to see stones, trees, animals, and people: a whole world.
This shining flashlight is your good attitude towards all the others, the mutual guarantee that you feel towards them. In the mutual guarantee that stems from you, you begin to discover the upper system and to see that in it, right there before you, there are trees, animals and people, which you didn’t see before.
But all the inanimate objects, plants, animals and people are not corporeal like in our world, but are spiritual. This is the picture that is revealed to you. They are the same familiar faces, but you discover the internal connection among them.
Many years ago I saw a movie about a diamond theft. The robbers sprayed a special spray and in this mist they began to see the laser beams that activate the alarm if someone crossed the room.
So it is as if you are also spraying a special spray around you, like a cloud of emotional attitude, of sharing, of a sense of connection and mutual guarantee, and in it you discover the laser beams that connect us to one another and see how they pass and tie everyone.
You discover this relationship, and see how it operates and manages everything. You understand what really motivates everyone.
Now, you see that everyone is moving, but you don’t understand which forces are moving them. Then you suddenly begin to feel, both physically and internally, how a hand enters the puppet and begins to move it from one place to another. This is revealing the governance and upper Providence.
Accordingly you learn how to adapt yourself to the system of this Providence, just as the movement of a good horse is adapted to the desires of the rider.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/12, Shamati #174
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Question: At the beginning of the 20th century, in Russia in particular, there was a widespread campaign to eliminate illiteracy. What seems perfectly natural today back then was received with hostility. Many people refused to send their children to schools and didn’t wish to learn themselves because they considered it a pointless waste of time. Today a similar situation may arise, when the integral education that we are offering could be perceived as something useless, unnecessary. How can we overcome this resistance?
Answer: I think that today a large number of educators, psychologists, and sociologists understand the brewing problem, except they don’t know how to deal with it. It means that it’s necessary to approach them as broadly as possible with explanations.
Teachers empathize with students, and moreover, at times they suffer even more than their pupils. After all, they are forced to exist under constant negative pressure from children, whose beastly egoism, unrestricted by any boundaries, is directed against the teachers. Every student tries to assert before them his or her own independence and striving for self-affirmation.
I think that teachers and educators need some training on this to be able to discern in a new methodology at least something for their own benefit, something that would allow them to work with children normally.
The work of an educator today is rather difficult, serious, and I would even say risky. A person is subjected to such conditions, such moral pressure that this work could even be called “harmful.” Forty five minutes of being in the classroom with the children generates a lot of stress and enormous strain on the teacher.
Together with the educators, we need to prepare for them a methodological resource that would help them understand that first and foremost, we are concerned with the atmosphere in the classroom, without even changing the class itself yet.
Students cannot get used to integral discourse yet because right now it’s impossible to discuss anything with anyone—it will lead to shouting, shutting each other up, abuse, swearing, and who knows what else. Now the educator at least sits them down, holds them still in some way, and somehow, out of necessity, pacifies them. Meanwhile the pupils are sitting, all miserably, each in his own place, and they wait for this whole ordeal to come to an end.
A slow, smooth transition is needed here. I think that educators will gradually agree with this. They can already see that the current system is not one that has a right to exist in the new generation.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11
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Question: In the process of integral education a person begins to change, and as a consequence, his social environment changes too. Do we have to prepare him or her for that from the very beginning? After all, their previous environment might bombard us with accusations that we are some kind of a sect and that we corrupt people.
Answer: For this we need to precede our practical studies with a large campaign to disseminate the idea of integral education, a campaign that will be and already is based on scientific data, on the direct demands of nature, the surrounding environment, and of our own inner developing nature. After all, we are involuntarily moving towards an integral society anyway.
If we do not correspond to it, things will be bad for us. We have to learn how to be in sync with this new “round” framework that nature is creating around us; nature is driving us into a network of tight interactions. Resistance is useless here.
That’s why we must explain this idea, this opinion, this historical, social, and personal necessity to all of humanity. And afterwards, all our other actions will naturally stream from that and seem correct. People will begin to understand what we are doing and will strive towards it.
If we just demonstrate our actions without explanations, nobody would understand this, and people would greet us with hostility. We would be accused of sectarianism, perhaps of naivety, utopian thinking, and the like.
But if we begin to work with children and gradually instill in them elements of humanism (at least let’s call it that), I doubt that we’ll have any special problems here with society or with parents. And upon showing, after some time, certain positive results, we could then rely on public opinion. That’s why the most fertile soil for our activity is children’s organizations.
But on the other hand, it is the most difficult because access to them is regulated by the state. The government has a right to introduce different programs into schools and to forcefully impose on children whatever is desirable for itself, and not whatever is best for the children. It’s very difficult to fight against this conservative system.
Still, society is fighting, creating private schools and alternative educational methods. In our day, in many countries of the world a child can be educated at home, through the Internet, and take exams remotely. This is already a big plus. This was impossible in the past because laws forbade home schooling.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11
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Question: Some people have already started practically implementing the method of integral upbringing. They have gained the first experience and made the first mistakes. I would like to discuss this aspect using an example of a specific situation.
An acquaintance of mine started raising her daughter using this methodology. She breastfed her daughter until the girl was almost two years old. Then she raised her according to the developmental phases: zero to three, three to six, and from six to nine years. Everything went well until the child started school. The girl stood out from everyone; she was more open, uninhibited, and more positive, and she quickly ran into powerful resistance from the regular environment. Later on schoolteachers joined this opposition as well.
A very serious situation arose, where the mother and child were forced to struggle against the system because the creation of a separate environment, the kind that we spoke about, is currently unfeasible. What would you recommend? How do we help these people?
Answer: If you’re talking about Russia, I have a few examples in this country of working precisely according to the principles of the integral system. This isn’t our system, but they are all very similar.
Their classes are more like extracurricular activities, where a child doesn’t sit in front of blackboard and teacher, but develops through free movement and discussions. He or she grasps the world through examples and not through dry lesson explanations that he has to memorize to pass the test the next day, and forget right after. There are many such examples in Russia, and they are well known there. But all of them are still just little “sheep.”
Undoubtedly, if you breastfeed a child until they’re two years old, as has been instilled in human nature since ancient times, then he or she receives all the necessary nutrients and micro-elements that help them resist all the problems that could exist at that age.
We are afflicted by many illnesses, not because they are particularly virulent, and not because we need to build immunity to them, but because we don’t receive enough mother’s milk in infancy. Today a baby is separated from the breast practically a week or a month after birth, if it’s even breastfed at all. That’s why all the problems begin precisely with not nursing.
Since the goal of integral upbringing is to establish maximum closeness to nature, in our family, in our domestic order, we need to adhere to the same natural state that we observe in the natural interaction among animals. We don’t have this instinct, but we have to awaken it in ourselves on the basis of scientific information about what existed in previous centuries, instead of considering them anachronistic. That’s first.
Second, an absolute majority of parents are unhappy with scholastic education because of the problems that currently exist in schools, classrooms, and society. A vast majority of children would gladly not go to school and instead would arrange a completely different method of upbringing and education for themselves.
Try to discuss with the children the fact that over the course of the year they will have to learn a little more about the way the world works and the way we and our society’s laws are structured. After all, in the course of 10-12 school years, we are preparing a human being for life. What should he or she know? How should they learn to interact with others? First and foremost, it is necessary for them to be able to help themselves, to help others, and know who to receive help from others. That is, everything is practically built on unification, on correct involvement and interaction with one another. Does school teach that? No!
We are preparing common craftsmen so that they could graduate from some vocational school, acquire some occupation or specialization, and earn a living for themselves. We don’t think about what’s next besides a salary.
Even about earning an income we don’t think much because we don’t morally prepare a person for that. He strives to evade any responsibilities that are related to society, parents, and family; he doesn’t wish to build one.
We need to think about how to transform the school. Our goal shouldn’t be to subordinate a child to the school, to such despotic or old German system, like when peasants became factory workers and nothing more, but to completely transform the school!
Aside from our integral approach, there are many similar methods. I won’t go into their comparative analysis, but they are all alike in that first and foremost, they think about the person, and not about what you need to cram into him, what mass of quickly forgettable knowledge.
That’s why today many are leaning towards their children not attending school at all. There is the Internet, distance learning, and home schooling. And anyway, a mother should stay at home with her children and not be away at work. A father has to provide for the family, and a mother should care for the home and raise children. Then it would be a normal family.
In other words, we should slowly climb down from the tree of the “realization of evil” and return to normal and balanced systems of mutual interactions. And we should stop crippling poor children! First, parents drag their children to kindergarten, then send them off to school, and they come back bruised from the battle for leadership instead of socializing with the collective. It’s not a collective but an endless battle!
We need to transform schools into something completely different, something humanistic. The state in which it exists today has so outlived itself that it’s painful to look at it.
But since a large amount of money has been poured into education, and enormous masses of people involved have a vested interest in it, they will not give it up easily. And they cannot change either. The educational system is the most ossified system. Educators are people who only know their own lesson and aside from it, no other lessons. That is why this is a very big problem.
Transformation needs to begin with the educators. We need to organize humanities courses and, first and foremost, mandatory integral courses for the body of educators with the aim of transforming them. In parallel to that, we should introduce psychologists and integral upbringing specialists into the school, who will then pursue discussions with students.
Furthermore, we need to introduce classes for instructors who would only be a few years older than their future students, and consequently, could easily develop contact with them and exert a positive influence on them. All this needs to be prepared. Without that our future generation will become the lost generation.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11
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On Wednesday, January 18, 2012, Ethiopian Israelis staged a protest in Jerusalem against inequality. The Mutual Guarantee movement supported the rally. Only unity above all contradictions will bring the world to good!
Below are some photos from the demonstration.
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