Question: There are many nongovernmental charitable organizations in the world which honestly yearn to help people. What is wrong with them? After all, these philanthropists seem to feel that their well-being depends on the welfare of the world.

Answer: That’s the root of the problem: They are helping so that they may feel at peace. A small part of the world population feels that it has to help others. A person feels more at ease, and this is what gives him or her personal satisfaction.

In charitable organizations, there are many people who have a natural need to tend to others. They are programmed with an instinct. They have to assist in order to appease themselves. Baal HaSulam writes that in the world, there are 10% of such individuals, and according to the statistics, it is 7% or 8%.

However, all of this derives from egoism and is one of its manifestations. I love the world as my own child, and I feel bad if the world feels bad. I must help Africa in order to get rid of bad feelings. That’s all.

Such assistance won’t help anybody. On the contrary, it only brings harm since the more altruists give, the more their beneficiaries get used to doing nothing and do not evolve.

A similar problem surfaced in Russia today. It turns out that high oil prices are undesirable. On the surface, it fills the treasury daily, but it’s not worth it. After all, we won’t develop like this. We will just sit on our oil pipe, make a feast, and build golden palaces, but at the same time, as a country, as a nation, we will keep degrading. It is impossible to evolve without a need. Hence, despite basic logic, they don’t wish to collect “oil money” any more and are becoming aware of such things.

All present development of the world, along with charities and the commonwealth market, is nothing but egoism’s domain. Nothing good will come out of it, no matter where it is. On the contrary, all parties are only pressuring each other. We have found the law of integral interconnection, but everyone wants to use it egoistically. “Ah, that’s what it is! Global interdependence? Let’s take over the world then. We’ll put everybody in his place, and if anybody rebels, we’ll threaten to cut off their oxygen.” This is how they wish to utilize the integral network that nature reveals to us.

We are now in a very dangerous predicament since if our egoism is tied to global interconnection, it allows it to control the entire world globally, over everyone at once. This is what is threatening us if people lack wisdom and the perception and understanding of what the future holds in store for us.

They quietly decide the fate of the world to fit their petty objectives, having no clue what it will lead to in the near future and even tomorrow. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Iran are vivid examples of that. In the end, everything will produce the opposite result.

The games are over. We can’t give power to our egoism any longer. When the world locks into a global system, you can’t act as you did before, ruling by gold or force. It won’t work. Iraq is a vivid demonstration of it. America’s shame is before the entire world, and they are still at it. It’s all about lacking the understanding of the integral laws. No might and no brain will solve this problem. Russia has fallen, despite all its riches, and the United States will fall even lower.

Today, the approach must be adequate to a world-wide tendency toward global integration. Otherwise, you will lose.

A little time will pass, and we will witness how even terrorist organizations will start to understand it. It will be impossible to control the world by force any longer. The arising problems will make everybody think about what to do next.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/14/2011 on An Integral World

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Humanity must come to an understanding that unity is the next stage in its development. Since we have already become one family, one nation, one system, where everyone is interdependent, there is no other choice but to accept this fact and treat it very seriously. The general system should be studied through the principal of systems engineering in order to work out and introduce laws that regulate interrelationships between people, nations, and all of humanity.

Just ask the scientists what an integral system means, and they will tell you that we are all interdependent and that no one can make a move without moving all the rest. Thus, it’s necessary to consider everyone’s interests without any exceptions. The first step is to not do to others what you wouldn’t want done to you, and the second step is to correctly and effectively implement a system that’s based on the principal of love thy neighbor as thyself.

Until we establish such an interconnection in our system, we will not see a good life. With each day, the damaged mechanism of our interconnection becomes more and more apparent. On the still level of nature, the imbalance among us will be evident through various natural disasters such as eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes, global warming, explosions on the Sun, and so on. The Moon could also become a source of various problems. This is how the imbalance caused by us becomes apparent on the still level.

Problems on the vegetative level can affect the crops. The Egyptian plagues described in the Bible tell us in the language of allegory about the possible disasters on the vegetative and animate levels. Then, it will come to the human level.

This is why, on one hand, we must accept this integral law as a law, and on the other, we must implement the educational system as soon as possible and to explain to people why the law is as such, and why and how we must follow it.

Millions of people are unemployed in today’s’ modern world. There also exists a concealed unemployment. A lot of people will stop what they are doing because it is destructive to nature. The military-industrial workers will also become unemployed, and so on. All these people will work in a sphere of agitation and education. As a result, each person will provide what’s necessary for others.

This is exactly what we need: to produce what is necessary for each person and divide it between everyone. In addition, we must provide education. Each person has to receive his “educational portion” and his share of vital necessities. This will be the duty of worldwide governments and of the entire universal system of humanity.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/14/2011 on An Integral World

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Question: How is it possible to explain to people that real evil lies in our opposition to the nature of the universe?

Answer: We can give a person this knowledge and sensation by presenting this fact to him by means of the right upbringing from society’s end. We will have to organize this upbringing in a way where it will contain a connection with the Light that reforms.

An additional problem emerges here. People without a point in the heart have to receive this illumination through us. If we take care of them, if we give them the method of correction, if we hold various events, broadcast TV and radio shows, work on the Internet, and if we formulate all the necessary principles for people, then they become attached to us and are nourished by the force that operates in our system, which lies deeper than their system.

It is enough to attach them to this extent in order for them to understand that their future depends on unity. But how can we bring them to this sensation? It can happen with the help of upbringing, social opinion, and the influence of those around you. The environment is able to instill the most removed and unnatural notions in a person. How so?

The society simply starts demonstrating condemnation or respect for certain qualities that a person has, and that’s all it takes. The people around a person can treat him dually: positively or negatively, and this is entirely sufficient.

We have to understand that there is no other way to go, that we have to attain balance with nature, and that we have to involve the mass media and other means, paying special attention to the young generation in order to already start teaching children about life in the new world. Without this, there is no other way to achieve anything.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/16/11

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The first principle of upbringing: Nature is united and we are opposite to it.

Part one: Research of nature and society shows that we are all interconnected. People are a single organism or a single system inside of nature’s system.

Just as it befits the parts of a living body, so we should unite with one another above all the differences for the good of the whole body.

Today we are gradually discovering this and therefore we are calling humanity’s present state global and integral. It is global because in our days the interconnection among the world’s entire population is forcefully being revealed. Among all of its parts and in all of its differences, no matter what it is, the connection is being revealed as a necessary factor.

This is coming from the side of nature rather than our desire to be interconnected or not. It is simply a fact that from one day to the next we discover more and more ties among us.

A question arises: Did this connection exist before? Or were we disconnected before and now our interconnection has formed and is being expressed?

This question needs to be divided into two parts. On one hand, we are and always have been interconnected and are in total, perfect unity. This is our state relative to the Creator and it is not a criterion for measuring anything. This unity is called Infinity (Ein Sof): the state of Infinity, the world of Infinity, Malchut of Infinity. However, we are yet to reach it in our sensations.

Right now, we, all of humanity, are going through the levels of development. We have to modernize our interconnection at every moment. Throughout history we developed on the still, vegetative, and animate levels, until we attained the human level, and after that on the human level, we again went through the same sub-levels: still, vegetative, and animate, until reaching the modern era of the human degree on the human degree—the “human in man.”

That is how we have gone through the entire process of human preparation and have begun to develop the human in us. “The human in man” is the likeness of the Creator which we must acquire today. The likeness of the Creator is the same thing as the global, integral interconnection among all of us. Today we stand at the beginning of the phases of unification—unity that happens out of realization, awareness, and desire. That is how it has to be from our end.

That is why now we are not being assessed in relation to the world of Infinity, but in relation to how much we understand, realize, and are ready to take on the form of unity that nature or the Creator places before us. Don’t try to be a righteous man, regardless of how you envision this concept. You have to be corrected according to the conditions you are in. “Corrected” means united. There is just one thing we have to do—unite with one another.

On the path to unity we go through the phase of bestowal for the sake of bestowal (“Don’t do unto others what you yourself hate”) and then reception for the sake of bestowal (“Love your neighbor as yourself”). Yet the principle is unchanging: All of man’s upbringing lies in unifying with his neighbor.

Nature is becoming expressed as more and more global and therefore we must also be global and unite with it.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/16/11

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Lesson on Topic “I Created the Evil Inclination, and I Created the Torah as a Spice”
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The Book of Zohar — Selections, Chapter “Yitro (Jethro),” “You Will Behold the Secret of Secrets,” Item 213, Lesson 3
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Talmud Eser Sefirot 3, Part 9, Item 10, Lesson 8
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Topic: The Principles of Global Education, Lesson 2
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The environment is not people’s faces or their material bodies, but the desire or force that I receive from them. Then this desire becomes my own, becoming added to my point in the heart.

If I am able to receive from them the impression about the greatness of bestowal, the Creator, the spiritual goal, the desire to bestow, then I have the opportunity together with them to awaken the force of the Light that is concealed there. Then, under the Light’s influence, this desire begins to be corrected – meaning instead of the opposite side to show me the face of spirituality, the quality of bestowal, in which I reveal my life in the Light of bestowal. This is the revelation of the spiritual world, the Creator to the creatures.

That is why the Creator is called Boreh – come and see, meaning everything I received in the desires which I collected from the environment. The environment is my own desire, but seen from its opposite side and therefore seemingly relating to other people.

I received this desire from them and understood that it is my own, and therefore I want to attach is back to myself. However, spirituality is structured so that my AHP (lower part) is inside Galgalta Eynaim (the upper part) of other people. That is why I cannot return my AHP without receiving Galgalta Eynaim of everyone else.

It turns out that my receiving desires return to me, but together with the bestowing desires of others, meaning corrected desires, and I attach them to me together with the Light of Hassadim that fills them. Thus, the greatness of bestowal that I tried to receive from the environment is ready-made spiritual Kelim, desires in which I attain spirituality.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/16/11

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Our entire difficulty is that when we begin the spiritual path, we desire to act the same way as we acted in our material lives until now where we counted on our own forces and fought for some kind of values. Consciously or unconsciously, all of our calculations were aimed at our own benefit.

The importance of the goal served as the means for attaining it, and it works that way in everything no matter what I search for: rest, money, power, respect, or knowledge. However, I received desires from the environment, become excited by what other people desire, and that is how I was always able to multiply my desires and develop. My own desires did not go beyond the animate body—meaning the desires for food, sex, and family, while my attraction to everything else—for money, power, and knowledge, was adopted only from the external environment, human society.

When a new desire awakens in a person, the desire for the spiritual world, it has to develop by the same paths. But a problem emerges here because when a person enters a society of people who study together with him and he must develop under their influence, then on the outside he only sees the material qualities, such as who is smarter and who learns the material better.

But his desire with which he has to advance, the egoistic “point in the heart,” is “the opposite side of the holy soul.” It has to be developed, and it develops only under the greatness of the goal, the greatness of the Creator.

However, all of these values—the greatness of the goal, the Creator, spirituality, the upper world—are based on the greatness of bestowal instead of reception. And that is where a halt occurs, as it is written, “In the place where the sinners will fall, the righteous will rise and walk forth,” with both the sinners and the righteous living inside one person.

In this regard everything depends on how a person treats his environment. It really begins being a spiritual environment for him only on the condition that he understands that he has to receive from them the impression of the greatness of bestowal, love for the neighbor, meaning a new desire for bestowal, the spiritual desire.

It turns out that a person begins the spiritual path with one single “point in the heart.” This is a very important point, the basis of a person, but it is the “opposite side of the holy soul” and he will never have anything else besides it himself. To this point he has to add all of his other spiritual Kelim until Malchut of the world of Infinity. And he receives all of these desires from the environment because nothing new will develop any longer inside of himself.

The spiritual Kli is received from the environment, and it is called the greatness of the goal, which serves as the spiritual vessel or desire, the place where the person will reveal the Creator, the connection and union with Him.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/16/11

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We have to know that besides the “point in the heart”—the opposite side of the holy soul, we won’t receive anything else from above. Not one additional spiritual desire will awaken in me.

I have to receive everything else from the environment, which is where my spiritual Kli is found, meaning all the desires in which I will reveal the upper world, the Creator, spiritual life. This desire is called “the greatness of the goal” because that is how it is expressed in my sensation.

It seems to me that importance does not belong to the goal and that the goal is something else, but in fact, the importance itself is the spiritual Kli. It’s not by virtue of this importance that I will attain the goal, as if it were a compass determining the direction in which I have to run. Rather, the goal is precisely inside of this desire which I receive from the environment.

Feel how the spiritual desire differs from the material one—it spreads out to everyone, like air. This is not egoistic fulfillment which one person receives and another one lacks as a result. Spirituality does not decrease due to being divided when I pass it on to someone else. There’s enough of it for everyone! It’s the same as how you can light thousands of candles from one candle and the first fire won’t get any smaller.

Therefore, once I begin my spiritual advancement with just the point in the heart, I soon find myself at a crossroads and don’t know where to go. I no longer find any forces inside of me or the aspiration to continue. At that moment, where can I get the motivation, stimulus, and direction to come to the group and demand the greatness of the goal from it?

If I had that inner desire, then I would already realize it in some way. But what should I do if I don’t have it? Does the group have to take care to ensure that I will have the impression of the greatness of the goal, bestowal, or do I have to continuously look for this myself?

That is when we come to the notion of the mutual guarantee. In general we have to take care of everything in order to become a “spiritual environment” which awakens every person who enters it. It gives an example and stimulates one’s desires, showing that others have something that I don’t have. It ignites envy of spiritual attainment just like in this world I see other people’s cars and houses and this increases my desire.

Society has to take on the right form through which it will come forth in relation to every one of its members, ensuring that he won’t have a moment of rest. But a person has to have a point in the heart, his own awakening, in order to be like a spiritual seed that is planted in the soil in order to come in contact with the soil for the very first time. And this “soil,” the environment, has to be ready to give him everything he needs according to his first demand.

In this regard, we have to understand that every person working on elevating the goal for others is not helping them by doing this, but he is building this building of greatness for himself. He builds the common environment for everyone. The environment cannot be good for one person while being bad for another and so-so for a third party. It is mutual guarantee for everyone. Therefore, either we are all together in one boat and we all attain the goal, or, if someone falls short of giving enough efforts according to what he should in order to ensure the common awakening, then no one will reach success.

That is to say, every person should not worry about himself or about how can he get inspired from the environment by the greatness of the goal. If I worry that every one of my friends will have the sensation of the greatness of the goal, that is how I build my own Kli.

I cannot take care of myself because this will turn out to be egoistic. But if I take care of others, then this spiritual necessity comes back to me as a ready, perfect Kli.

We all connect into a single system where my lower part (AHP) connects with the upper parts (Galgalta Eynaim) of everyone else. Therefore, when I take care of everyone else with my AHP, then in response, I receive from them the sensation of their Galgalta Eynaim—the sensations of the desires of bestowal which I so lack.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/16/11

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Question: I know from experience that people don’t understand what kind of unity we are talking about. How can we explain this to them at least approximately?

Answer: Unity does not imply that I live in a common room or am acquainted with everyone. In practical terms it means that first and foremost I need to find a way to correct myself so as to not wish any harm to anybody. This is the first step.

We are not connected by mass media, text messages, or the Internet. These are merely the manifestations of the system we reside in; they are the means which allow us to feel how connected we are. The Internet will not bring unity to people; it will only explain that we are welded together, but in a negative form. After all, I use this Kli (vessel) exclusively for my own benefit and, possibly even to harm the others.

Hence, the first correction amounts to ceasing to desire any harm to a fellow human being. I begin to feel that we are inter-connected as integral parts, literally embedded into each other. I need to reveal this system since otherwise, nature will show it to me in a very unpleasant form. It strikes me in one place, and I suffer a misfortune in a totally different, seemingly unrelated place.

However, this is your part, and you have to feel this blow on yourself. If you still don’t sense what the others do, it means that you are not in the same organism, the same system, together with them. You still need to receive corrections: Either you will desire to accept them or nature will compel you to this.

For now we see how everyone is rejoicing in the others’ sorrow, each time when somebody feels bad. This is our nature. Today it is becoming revealed, and in accordance with it, we have to perform a correction.

By means of what? Kabbalists say that it’s the opinion of the environment. We have to artificially assemble around ourselves the environment which will obligate us to think differently and will educate us.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/16/2011 on The Principles of Global Education

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