Question: Why do we need to work on ourselves specifically in a group? Why can we not work on ourselves through interaction with the external world?

Answer: First of all, we need to work among ourselves in a group instead of the external world because Kabbalists recommend it. Why do they recommend this specifically? It is because together, we need to create a common desire which will have similar properties to the properties of the Creator, and then we will be able to reveal Him.

If I were to come up to a person on the street and tell him, “Let’s love one another,” he might think that I am gay. In reality, the property of love is the Creator’s property. It is His main property that is revealed before us. I need to attain this property one way or another. How do I do this? Only by being with people who understand me.

So, this means that we must unite our desires and feel one another as if we all were together, one whole. The common universal egoism is pushing us toward this.

Globalization, the interconnection that is becoming revealed, and the blows of nature, all moves us in one direction and forces us to become closer to “huddle up” like little animals who have nowhere to hide. All the miseries that are about to befall us will force us to become closer. It’s for us to become closer on the inside, instead of simply crowding up in one territory.

Nature will work systematically; it will hit in one place. This is why we need to “huddle up” with the people who understand us, and together create a common desire. As soon as we create it, this will be the group turning into one heart, one desire. Then, to the extent of our unification, we will feel the Creator: the manifestation of the Light of Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, and Yechida between us.

All the souls together are included among them into the entire world, but being a part of them, we have already united and passed this entire Light through us. Now, it gradually flows over to the other souls, and they also begin to awaken. They suddenly begin to feel that we have a special kind of fulfillment. And people will feel drawn to us. We will see them join.

But in order for this to happen, you first need to carry out a special condition so that there would be Light in you. This is why you cannot work with other people who do not have any of this. This flows out of the condition of correction of the worlds, and Kabbalah prescribes this. Why? It’s because this is the law of nature.

We need to begin with the uncorrected desires that are closest to the Light. By correcting them, we can use them to descend to a level below, desires that are less corrected. As we correct them, we descend into the even less corrected desires. We constantly go from easier work to harder work. This is the same way we also develop in our lives. We gradually solve all the problems from simple to complicated. This is a natural law of nature.
[33999]
From Lesson 2 in Moscow 1/16/2011, “A Prayer of Many”

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In order to be in balance with nature, it is necessary to consume intelligently, meaning to the degree it is necessary, depending on every person’s needs. Baal HaSulam writes about this in the article, “Peace in the World” and in other articles.

However, this practice cannot be imposed through terror. It can only happen by means of education! Yet in their times the Russian revolutionaries took a different path, having discarded the principle of education.

In addition, this was taking place in an underdeveloped country, with the most underdeveloped population that to this day is used to living in practically feudal conditions. Today the people of Russia, who are good-hearted and kind, still agree to the feudal conditions in which Russia exists to this day. This is not a capitalistic, but a feudal country with its customs, structure, corruption, and all of its social relations. It is feudalism.

It might seem to us, “But how can that be? This, in modern society? Isn’t it long gone? In the West, Feudalism hasn’t existed for 300 years already.” True, in the West it hasn’t existed for 300 years, but in Russia it still exists. That is to say, every person still agrees to it. The people still haven’t developed above that level.

Only a small portion of the population, about 10 – 20%, cannot tolerate these conditions, while everyone else agrees to live in them. They don’t care that they have a master, that they have to submit to someone without law and order, that everything can be bought and sold, and that the rich are powerful and right. People agree to this! That is why it is still deemed a feudal level of social development.

Marx absolutely did not suppose that this kind of country would try to implement his idea. He practically laid out Kabbalah in the form of economic laws. But the egoism of the post-Soviet realm is completely different. This egoism is feudal and not yet ready for serious development.

However, when we work with each person individually or with our groups in Russia, we see an astounding result because the people have points in the heart. They are very responsive and goal-oriented.

The question is: Will the society be able to understand that it has to unite, but not by the laws it was brought up by in the Soviet regime? The unity has to happen by laws where everyone is equal, conscious, and unites consciously. The people of Russia are not used to uniting consciously. Will they reach this, will they be able to do it? That is, indeed, a question.

Therefore, our groups in Russia are very dear to us. I personally know this nation very well since I grew up there and my native language is Russian. But can we look at Russia as the country that has the ability to easily realize the Kabbalistic principles? That is something I do not know.

On the other hand, in Europe, despite the fact that the people are very different from the Russian image, all they have to do is overcome a certain external opposition, a certain shell or casing. After that, as soon as this idea penetrates into people’s thoughts, they realize that it is true and are able to realize it inside of them through their development.

In Russia it is easy to come close to the individual. But in Europe it is much more difficult! Yet I think that if we penetrate inside the individuals in Europe, they will find the forces and abilities inside of them to unite. Their conscious collectivism will emerge.

On the other hand, in Russia collectivism does not emerge despite this. There the society is not developed collectively. I think that it is not yet able to do this.

Nevertheless, notwithstanding all of these surmises, we have to develop Kabbalah and disseminate it everywhere. Of course, there is a great boundary in the countries that were once socialist. But this should not stop us. We shouldn’t give any thought to where it’s easier and where it’s harder, why, and how. We should work, and that’s all. I never make any calculations. We do not know what is better and what is worse, and how everything will occur.
[34050]
From the 3rd lesson at the Berlin Convention on 1/28/11

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Excerpt from the talk at the 3rd World Spirit Forum “Cooperation in the Field of Consciousness,” Arosa (Switzerland), January 23, 2006:

All of nature’s forces except for human ego are in balance. All of them form a single system of nature’s forces and only man disturbs their harmony. Everything in nature is interconnected and aspires to equilibrium within itself and with the surrounding reality. The violation of similarity leads to the violation of equilibrium, beyond the limits of which the organism starts disintegrating. The possibility of restoring equilibrium is the condition of life.

Today mass media speaks about this a lot. Everything is based on the balance of forces. This is clear to us, but still we lack the full understanding of the greatness of our participation in this process. All of nature on all levels of development is in a very fragile state of balance. And man needs to realize that he is in breach of this balance. The unstable nature around us completely depends on us, and we are the only element in creation which is out of balance.

Man is in the middle of natural balance, and his fluctuations reflect on the whole of nature. Everything is automatically and instinctively balanced on the still, vegetative, and animate levels; this is how all of nature operates. And only man is under question. He is given freedom of will, and regrettably it is exercised egoistically; frightfully we are constantly “tilting” into the negative.

These faults accumulate over the course of thousands of years and we gradually take nature out of balance. Everyone speaks about this today: We are past the point of no return, and at this point there is nothing we can do with ecology, the contamination of the oceans of the world, the greenhouse effect, and so on. Briefly speaking, “relax, you do not have a choice.”

In reality this is not how things are. On the contrary, Kabbalah says that it is in our power. The current tilt was only caused by man. The problem is in realizing this. Even today there are many “intellectuals” who say that: “None of it matters; there are cyclical, recurring processes in nature.”

Obviously, we are not at an ecology conference, and we are not fighting for the protection of the environment. We must understand that all of this operates in a completely different manner. This way nature specifically teaches us to overcome the imbalance and turn the tendency in the opposite direction.

What for? To exist in a clean world? To be in our families with children? To have a calm and a long life? Absolutely not. We need to make the change for an entirely different reason. It is in order to begin to control ourselves, our influence on nature and thereby acquire the external perception of it, rise to the world of man: the spiritual, perfect, and eternal world.
[34012]
From Lesson 2 Berlin Convention 1/28/2011

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We can’t develop egoistically any further. Egoism has suddenly turned into our enemy. One may wonder: “How come? Let’s continue to develop technology, culture, and science, and travel to other planets. The quest for new frontiers can be endless.”

The problem is that the end goal, the purpose, and the thought of creation are different. Nature functions so that having reached the final egoistic state, we begin to suffer from our egoism unspeakably and don’t wish to evolve in it anymore.

In other words, we come to a certain crisis which tells us that egoism is finite. It’s the end of you, you’ve got nothing more to do. You wont’ be able to evolve inside it and be fulfilled; you won’t be able to reach a comfortable state in it. You will feel empty, finite, and transitory.

It’s a challenge in order to make us rise up to the next level—the level of the Creator, the upper Nature. It’s a threshold the world has reached today according to the predictions of all Kabbalists. Whether we like it or not, egoism will demonstrate to us its insignificance and inability to provide us with fulfillment; it will become a “help against us.” It won’t give us what we want either at home or at work; it will bring us neither health nor safety. Most importantly, it won’t help us answer the most pressing question: “What are you living for?”

Faced by that question, our entire “self” gets wiped away. It’s the most important, the most dramatic question which nullifies my very self, my pride, my existence, my essence: “Who I am and what I exist for?” A petty insect or an animal does not occupy themselves with it, they just live on and fill themselves fulfilling the program that runs inside them. I can’t do it, I am more miserable than them.

If not for the upper program of development, we would continue to exist as before. The United States with its consumer society and limitless capacities of Hollywood seemed entirely natural; humanity used to think that it’s our future and that nothing limits us. It turned that the end came very quickly and definitively.

That’s the fact we have to wake up to, that we can’t ignore: We are experiencing a global crisis, a crisis of our attitude to ourselves and Nature. It’s not temporary, there are no alternatives. We used to stir up revolutions and conduct social reforms; we tried to do something with ourselves and the environment, to change something to the better. Now we have nowhere to turn to. We feel that we don’t even have a desire to change anything.

That’s what the crisis is really about. On the other hand, however, it’s the level from which we begin our ascent into the upper world. Humanity, one social strata at a time, comes to that realization; it begins to feel it and little by little approaches the recognition of and transition to the next state.

Actually, we are the first to enter this state. Others will follow us, and we can see that with each passing day more and more people are beginning to at least understand the goal we are pursuing, and if not accepting it, at least considering it.

The problems of the world and our solution are coming closer, and it makes the solution more understandable; people lend their ears to it. And although the change requires tremendous inner revolution in one’s heart and mind so as to bring humanity to a new state, the process has developed quite rapidly over the past several years.

Humanity has never experienced such sharp turns as it does now. Kabbalah has entered the public domain only a decade ago, and look what has happened. Events are developing at a furious pace.

Still at least a few years may need to pass until we can address the world so it will listen.
[34025]
From Lesson 2 Berlin Convention 1/28/2011

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The entire progress of humanity over the course of several thousand years is hurting nature and us. It is purposefully “wound up” in a way that brings us to the realization of our evil. By constantly concentrating everything in ourselves, we come to realize that all of this is not right, it does not work when it comes to exiting outside.

Then why did we need this entire historic development? Why do I need to come back to this world and suffer in it from generation to generation for thousands of years? After all, we have been in this world many times, we have lived this life many times. What for? In order to realize this final state? Was this the only way to bring us to disappointment? Or is there another possibility?

Actually, this is not the point. Everything we have experienced and gone through over the course of thousands of lifetimes in this world was necessary. Only now we begin to rise and come out of ourselves with this egoism and the experience of its bitter “groundwork.” We need a big “black hole” of egoism. It had to manifest with all our problems.

We have put so much hard work into trying to fulfill this egoism and the next day it would disappear, and once again we would have to pursue this life, its fulfillment, different values, and so on. However, all our actions are stored in an enormous egoistic memory, which we begin to gradually unravel in the opposite direction only at a later time. Then the efforts spent on fulfilling ourselves are turned back and help us to seemingly unwind outside of us the entire history we have been through.

It is impossible to simply begin a different, outwardly-directed altruistic development from the egoistic development. It is impossible to begin to perceive the spiritual world without preparation. This can only be realized after a person fully experiences his entire egoistic essence, completely discovers himself, completely realizes that he is inside this egoistic nature, that everything is inside him, he collects everything within.

At the same time, this sets the terms of our circulation. We do not impose Kabbalah on anyone; we only offer it to the people who already feel: “That is it, this is the end, I must come to the next level.” That is the only way. If a person is not ready for this, Kabbalah will not do anything for him. In this case, he must continue to exist in this world for some more time, in order to complete his entire egoistic “package.”
[34044]
From Lesson 2 Berlin Convention 1/28/2011

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Karl Marx felt all the Kabbalistic conclusions rather well and expressed them quite openly, but at the same time did so unclearly for small people like Lenin and his associates. Baal HaSulam writes about this.

Karl Marx’ original works clearly indicate that he supposed that once people began to work with their egoism, they would realize that it is impossible. Technically, this is what people in Russia felt once they started building socialism after the Revolution. But they followed a path that Karl Marx definitely never thought would happen: the path of force.

When you are setting a condition of “love thy neighbor,” you cannot impose this condition, this law, through force. This was a Russian invention. This can never exist!

But Bolsheviks turned everything this way, and at the end they created terror and killed forty million people. Still, this did not lead to anything. You cannot artificially change human nature according to your own way, especially through force. It is impossible. When referring to nature, can you really do anything against it?

This ideology of so-called “love of neighbor” was imposed through force all the way until the final years of the soviet regime, until people had become completely disappointed in everything. It sounded nice on the outside, but we understand that it was nothing but terror on the inside.

Karl Marx assumed that people would realize the need to come together and would understand that there is no place for exploitation, that capitalism is corrupt, and that socialization of means and results of production is necessary. We will come to this anyway. The entire global crisis is leading towards this. We cannot avoid this.

Karl Marx wrote out all these Kabbalistic conditions as economic laws: Every person must be compensated for their work only with what they need to exist in our world. This refers to whatever is needed for every person to exist normally: an apartment, a job, a family, vacations, pension, healthcare, childhood education, everything that one needs on the level of our world, in our normal human society. Every person must have this.

But everything beyond the necessities becomes public property. And it must only be used for the benefit of the society, and only to the necessary extent for this society. Only then we will be in balance with nature.
[34053]
From Lesson 3 Berlin Convention 1/28/2011

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We think that each of us has their own issues and their own problems. “I wish to reach spirituality and I don’t care for the rest of the world. Sometimes I think about them, but essentially, what does it matter? Where’s the world and where am I?”

Obviously, it is a normal egoistic response. But what can one do? We have only one choice: Think really hard about how we are connected with one another. Kabbalah states that all humans are interconnected. We already feel it, and today we are more or less aware of it.

Alas, there aren’t any results from it yet. It’s evident that governments and individuals alike, no matter how smart, still can’t change and continue to live inside their personal, egoistic shells. But the problem is actually global and can be resolved only if we get connected.

The wisdom of Kabbalah says that all of us are separate individuals tied together by various types of connections. It is an enormous, heavy, very intricate, and very multifaceted system comprised of seven billion interconnected parts.

In this system, I can feel my “self” within myself, and then I sense our world. Or, I can feel what is outside of me: the other parts and the ties between me and all the others. In that case, I will perceive the upper world outside of me.

It is regarded as upper because I am governed by what is supplied to me from everybody else. Everything that occurs in me does so because ties from all seven billion parts run to me.

Then how do we solve the current problem that Nature forces onto us? It looks like we have to find a benevolent connection between us because it is the integral system that sends us all these troubling signals.It requires that we transcend ourselves and start feeling the surrounding space. Outside of me, there is the world of Infinity. Thus, we must all step outside and experience the field that lives between us. No one can feel it inside oneself.
[34028]
From Lesson 2 Berlin Convention 1/28/2011

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By coming out of my sensations and trying to be in someone else, I don’t step into his or her egoistic properties, but rather come into contact with what they aren’t yet: with their soul, with their spiritual potential. I don’t fulfill their egoistic, corporeal part, but instead I form in them myself, my spiritual image (Partzuf).

In truth, my soul is all I can fill in the others. A soul does not reside in the person. “A soul” is desire, and desire is not matter; it cannot be weighed on a scale. It is a field, a force, a force of desire that I direct to the others while it links with and remains in them as a record, as information that I enter into them, wishing to fulfill them.

My desire is scattered among all souls, all individual and common desires of people. At first, I am not even aware of it, and only later when I ascend to high spiritual degrees, do I start actively fulfilling them. Thus, such yearning outwardly forms a human soul.

The body dies since it is a mere animate organism which has no substance. What matters is how much of myself I managed to transfer into others with my desires. It is not actions which are required here, neither is it money or forces, but only desires. After all, desire is the greatest force in the world. It is the only thing that makes one person interact with another.

Hence, the friend’s role in the group is defined by what each of them will deposit into the others. Whether I like it or not, what the others plant in me starts influencing me. The global crisis reveals our egoistic interconnection; in the same manner, we are intertwined in our souls.

Generally speaking, a soul is something collective. There is one soul, one human, one Adam. And we, his particles, don’t yet comprehend that we are completely tied to one another, like parts of its spiritual organism, a spiritual system.

Therefore, everybody’s impact on all the others is direct and natural, exposed from one straight to the other. If we understand this, we gain a remarkable opportunity to selectively influence people and each other: pull, push, elevate, and help everybody. If we did employ this principle, we would definitely make a tremendous leap forth.

If each member of the group, man and woman alike, realizes this, then with their inner yearnings they can elevate us all right now. This depends solely on our internal desires, or rather, intention. Intention is an unfulfilled desire which is yet to come true. It is the most powerful force in the universe.

We see with the example of our world: The greater the physical force is, the less tangible it is. Who can feel the force of atomic interaction? And nonetheless, it can produce an explosion of enormous power from two pounds of matter. Intangible waves and emanations play a tremendous role in our life. And the force of thought, the force of desire, is the greatest of all.

Therefore, the key on our path is our intentions: How correctly we can form and connect them with one another. This means that each of us strives to live in the others, step out of oneself, their body, and start sensing the soul.

It is an incredible feeling when a person isn’t tied to their material body. Having stepped out of it, they start treating it as an “animate consort”: a horse, a donkey, a cow, a dog, and so on. They look after their body but absolutely don’t associate themselves with the life inside the “mammal.” They already feel that life goes on outside of them, in the enormous force field of the supreme mind.
[34032]
From Lesson 4 Berlin Convention 1/29/2011

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Question: What is the friend’s role in the integral system?

Answer: The role of the friend is enormous and invaluable. A person ascends to the extent that he or she helps all the others to unify. A person never works for himself directly, but always through the others.

In our world, I always pursue my own goal: I place myself and all the others in order and calculate what is best for me. Even ten people later, the benefit still has to return to me.

In the spiritual world, it isn’t the case. There, I calculate how much I can contribute to others so that it stays in them, not in me. My egoistic “self” eventually dies away, and what I have invested in the others (as I would in the bank, except that it would be to the others’ account rather than mine) remains. In the end, when I rise above my “self,” everything I had invested in the others becomes mine. It is as though I live in them, like a mother who lives in her children whom she takes care of.

The spiritual world is founded on this maternal attribute: on bestowal, love, shifting from oneself outward. As a result, we start experiencing ourselves living in others, and this state is perceived as eternal, complete. It isn’t dictated by my own state of existence, including my body. The body may even die, but “I” already live in other desires, other properties.
[34035]
From Lesson 4 Berlin Convention 1/29/2011

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We live in a fairly confusing world. And people ask themselves about where they live, where they exist. Generally, we did not ask these questions over the course of thousands of years. We thought that the world we live in is this world. This conception is called the “perception of the world according to Newton.”

Then, as we advanced in our study of nature, we discovered that other beings, which are different from humans, perceive the world in other ways: Snakes perceive it in the form of heat spots; dogs perceive it as a cloud of smells; bees perceive it divided into many sectors, and so on. In other words, every being perceives the world in different ways and is guided according to its sensations. And this does not prevent us from existing in one dimension, where we all perceive the world in absolutely different ways.

Then a different paradigm came about. Einstein came and proved that everything is relative: time, space, movement, and there is nothing absolute. In other words, our perception of reality is just our habits, and we could perceive it in a completely different way.

If we were to move at a very fast speed, if we were to orbit around large celestial masses, time and space would become deformed, and we would feel, see, and perceive ourselves in absolutely different ways. This is perception of reality according to Einstein, which is the theory of relativity: Everything is relative to man. The next scientist, Hugh Everett, proved that the world which we perceive in relation to us, that is, which depends on us practically does not exist; we build it in our sensations.

And then the wisdom of Kabbalah appeared, which was concealed for almost 6,000 years, and it was always written in its books that neither we nor the world exist as we perceive it; everything is only relative to our senses. If we were to change our senses, the world would change.

In other words, according to Einstein’s theory there is an observer and the object of observation. According to Hugh Everett’s theory there are an object and an observer, both of which constantly change, and we are able to perceive something average between them. But we can also even perceive on demand, according to our inner qualities. This is what Kabbalah speaks about.

Why do we need all this knowledge? We need it so we could finally understand where we live, the world we exist in. Films like “The Matrix” and “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” appear, which convey assumptions and ideas that the dimension that we perceive through our physical senses is not the dimension we live in.

We have vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. We perceive whatever falls within the scope of these five senses. Our image of the world is based on this.

But if we were to begin to disengage these senses, the image of the world would begin to decrease and disappear. In other words, what we perceive is not what actually exists outside of us, but our reactions, our inner influences, the so called “disturbances” to things we do not understand.

But what world would we perceive if we were to free ourselves of our five senses? This is where Kabbalah comes in and tells us how we can rise above these five senses and begin to perceive the world as different, additional. We can begin to perceive nature, the world, the way it exists outside our bodies, outside our five senses, in addition to the world where we now exist in our bodies like any live organism.

We have a rudiment of this perception, the so called “point in the heart.” This is neither a heart nor a point in it. This simply is a name for a rudimentary and dormant sense that we have. We can develop and use it to begin to perceive the world that we can imagine outside of our bodies.

So, Kabbalah speaks about the world that exists in reality outside of us, outside our five senses, outside the flow of information that enters us. This is why it is called “Kabbalah” ( “reception”), a guide to acquiring a real perception of the actual reality.
[33985]
From Public Lecture in Berlin 1/27/2011

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