Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”: Rabbi Akiva tells us about that, “All is in deposit.” This means that everything that God had placed in Creation and given to people, He did not give to them licentiously, but secured Himself with collateral. And should you wonder what collateral He was given?

He responds to that by saying: “and a fortress spreads over all of life.” This means that the Creator has cleverly devised a wonderful fortress and spread it over all of humanity, so no one will escape. All the living must be caught in that fortress and necessarily accept His work, until they attain their sublime goal. This is the collateral by which the Creator secured Himself, to guarantee that no harm would come to the deed of Creation.

“All is in deposit” means that whether I want to or not, I will have to pay my “debt” to the Creator. I was given life not because I asked for it and without my consent, and still I have to pay the debt. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t ask for it. If I received life, I have to pay for it, and I can only pay by attaining the goal of creation.

We see that the sufferings we have been through throughout history are gradually becoming more “spiritual” and “virtual,” and detached from reality. Today many people don’t want to live although they have everything. Once a person was happy if he had half a kilo of bread a day and was satisfied with that, but about fifty years ago the “shopping” era began. Today it is coming to an end and not because of a shortage of money but because people lack the desire to shop. This is the problem—the desire is changing. Even if you offer a person a million dollars, it will not spur him like before; he doesn’t want anything anymore.

This is the natural inclination of our evolution that brings us to ask about the meaning of life. So what is left of life if not food, shopping, and recreation? There is nothing else that we can enjoy. It isn’t by chance that football and all sorts of distractions other are being promoted so much these days. This is the policy: to provide people with “tranquilizers” and other nonsense to give them something to fill their inner emptiness with. Otherwise, they would express their rage in the streets instead of in the stadiums.

A person who feels empty asks himself more and more: “Why was I given a life that I didn’t ask for, why am I being forced to do something that I don’t want to?” Why? He feels as if his hands and feet are chained.

This is why we need integral education today. Thanks to it people will understand that everyone is connected and that we depend on one another and that by using this integral connection correctly, we will be able to solve all our problems.

Good relations are generally the key to our success in every aspect. We could have machines replace physical work in every field and provide everything we need. But we don’t want that since it isn’t clear what a person would enjoy then. Even now, most people already have everything they could imagine except for a deficiency. A person is absolutely full, so what’s next? He can either kill himself or start killing others otherwise he won’t feel any pleasure.

We enjoy only when pleasure fills a deficiency. But the pleasure immediately neutralizes itself. So how can we prevent this? We have to constantly renew the desire.

This is exactly what the world leaders tried to achieve by building a modern economy and inserting new desires into people and satisfying them. But this is impossible, since our corporeal desire is changing in quality and eventually doesn’t want anything on the previous level. To chase our own tail in order to buy a new washing machine and a new television every year and to change the wall paper…? How much longer can we take that? A person suddenly discovers that his desires are gone.

Thus a whole philosophy of evolution has come to an end. It wasn’t just a way of making money but a way of making people happy. At the top people thought about getting richer providing all the basic necessities and keeping them in a close circuit so that people would buy light bulbs that burn out after a short while, printers with an integrated chip that stops working after a while, and other low quality products. They continued to supply incentives so that people will feel it is worthwhile to work, to live, and to buy. They continued to renew the deficiencies since without a deficiency that receives pleasure, there is no feeling of happiness.

They were right about that. It was indeed a time of prosperity in the West. The Americans saw that their new philosophy justified itself and everyone followed them happily. But in the meantime the desire grew, not only in quantity but also in quality, so a person doesn’t need all that anymore. He doesn’t see any point in investing his whole life in that. In the past people bought things without any advertising, but today more than half the cost of a product is due to advertising costs. On the other hand, in countries that are more economically developed, depression, suicide, and drug abuse are becoming more prevalent.

So where are we headed? A person cannot go on living without feeling happy, excitement, and the “ecstasy” that is felt when the deficiency meets the pleasure. But they immediately neutralize one another if there is no Masach (screen) between them. This is what the wisdom of Kabbalah is about, the wisdom of how to receive correctly, since without a Masach, a person discovers only darkness.

If the decision makers were a bit wiser, they would accept that. But in the meantime, we are in the middle of the process, so in any case there is no other choice. The deficiency has to be in contact with the pleasure, but only if it doesn’t stop. Otherwise, it isn’t worth it. We are ready to renew only our animal deficiencies over and over again, but anything that is beyond that is questionable. So what we see on almost every TV channel today is mainly cooking programs or sex, because people are so narrow minded…

We hope that we will manage to explain the need for a Masach between the deficiency and the pleasure. Then the infinite pleasure will give us a feeling of eternal life.
[102338]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/8/13, “The Peace”

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