The people of Israel returned to the land of Israel, but if we are still overwhelmed by thoughts about corporeal fulfillment: food, sex, family, money, power, and knowledge, which absorb all our attention and obscure our view, then we are still in exile. Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 gave us a strong blow because we unexpectedly acquired territory and additional population that we were unprepared for, and did not know how to deal with it.
This led to a big stagnation in our technological development since we acquired a lot of cheap, unskilled labor force, and we did not need to develop new technologies in construction and other fields. It really slowed us down. It took a lot of time to overcome this blow and begin to develop technology and a new lifestyle under these new conditions.
The Six-Day War was a big blow to Israel because we were too proud of our success and strength. We should have reached the revelation of evil, but it has yet to happen. The entire history of the State of Israel demonstrates how the Creator teaches us time after time that all our successes, achievements, wealth, and intelligence do not help us. As a result, we still find ourselves like sheep surrounded by wolves with nowhere to hide.
This is what our entire history teaches us, and we will again soon feel that the whole world is up in arms against us. Today we feel at the top due to our technological power. But this is only to raise us to the very height, as if on a roller coaster ride, and then push us down. It will be a very harsh attraction because the whole world plunges into darkness and goes out of balance in this descent. It has no buffering systems for the huge leaps in finance, international relations, etc. This is on the background of a complete global interdependence of each one upon everyone. The situation is very alarming.
According to the connection between root and branch, there is no better place for correction than the Land of Israel. Therefore, we are obliged to work here. Jerusalem, Safed, and Tiberias are all zones of special spiritual influence. Therefore, there is no doubt that it is easiest to implement the correction in the Land of Israel.1
Baal HaSulam writes about the split in the people of Israel that led to the collapse of the Second Temple: the ideological dispute between the Pharisees and the Sadducees regarding the need to work for the Creator. But nowadays, there is no other struggle except for a place in leadership, for power, money, and that is it. We are at the very end of the process of the descent of generations. Therefore, in our generation there is no longer an ideological struggle, but simply everyone fights for his position, for his influence on voters. This has nothing to do with ideology, and the Kabbalists take no part in this.
Today we have reached the last point in the descent of generations. There is no lower place to go—what remains is only world war and global crisis. There is no way out; now we must find a way to climb. The only thing we need to understand is where it comes from, that is, what the purpose is, where it leads us, and what should be done to use everything that happens for the benefit of the people of Israel (if it is really Israel, meaning aspiring to the Creator).
This will bring us to the realization of evil from which we will understand what the opposite, good state should be and how to achieve this good precisely from inside of the evil. We are aware of the need for our connection and the fulfillment of the gift we have received: the Torah, the science of Kabbalah, the method of unity. There is nothing greater than unity. All the slogans about “love your neighbor” should be practically embodied in us today.
Our egoism is the only enemy that prevents us from achieving a good corporeal life and steals our eternal, spiritual life from us. Because of egoism, we are born like animals, and we live and die like animals. Our body dies and decomposes without our having developed a soul, and it turns out that our lives were lived in vain.
Life is given in order to develop a soul during our existence in this corporeal world. The soul is a part of Divinity from above, and therefore, it is eternal. The desire to bestow to a neighbor, which is outside of my personal interests, is being like the Creator, and therefore, it is eternal. We must develop this desire as much as possible.
We must understand that we are flying down the roller coaster, on the steepest descent with a wall at the end we will crash into. So it is worth thinking about how to escape from this global Holocaust, when all the nations of the world will turn against Israel.
Salvation is only in the unity of the people of Israel, in their readiness to unite in order to give unity to the whole of humanity. We must be as close to bestowal as possible, at least in the corporeal world. This implies mutual assistance, fair distribution, and all the conditions of the future society, even if it is for egoistic reasons. If we do not do so, it will turn out very bad for us. We do not want to bring the world to such physical suffering—it would be better if this decision were to come as a result of the realization of evil before the blow comes.2
The crisis within the people of Israel primarily lies in the fact that no one feels that they are in exile. On the contrary, everyone considers it as freedom because Israel is a strong, prosperous country. Everything is great and we have what to be proud of. They do not understand that these are not the parameters Israel should be measured by. This is not about corporeal success. The state in which Israel now exists is called “destruction.”
It seems that everything is fine and Israel is the country of the most advanced high technologies. But we exist inside nature, which is all closed and global. Nature is the Creator, and we act against Him both in the spiritual and in the corporeal sense. From the point of view of spirituality, we are completely opposite to the Creator because we behave in the most egoistic way, worse than all.
Our desire to enjoy is so developed that we manage to overtake the whole world. But in fact, we have been given power in order to succeed in exactly the opposite way: to serve the whole world, to bestow, to teach, and to become a connecting channel between the Creator and the created beings. Instead, we use our egoism in order to develop hi-tech and extract as much money as possible for capitalists and for armaments. Meanwhile, children are neglected and families are being destroyed. This is a completely wrong approach because we are going against the general program of nature.
Day after day, we become increasingly remote from the common nature, and therefore, we will lose on all counts. First of all, this relates to general nature, that is, to ecology and the attitude of the nations of the world toward Israel. We feel how anti-Semitism is growing daily, crossing all borders, and we are becoming increasingly “stiff-necked people,” actually living not in the Land of Israel but in Egypt, enslaved to Pharaoh.
We have become very successful in developing all the corporeal values in the world: in hi-tech, armaments, and the economy, using our egoistic qualities and inflating them to such an extent that we have become the very first in using the egoism. It turns out that we have reached the stage of the Pharaoh. Suffering will inevitably come soon because we have built such a world. However, we can turn this looming tsunami into a gentle and benign wave. It will not be a tsunami wave that washes away the whole world and drowns everyone in it, but a positive wave of, say, chocolates and flowers.
Let us start with the realization of evil and stop seeing ourselves as successful. Because of this, we find ourselves in a deep hole. Israel is obliged to give the world the method of correction, the knowledge of the Creator, and bring everyone to the final corrected state.3
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/30/19, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Exile and Redemption”
1 Minute 8:20
2 Minute 36:00
3 Minute 1:04:20
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The People Of Israel In The Land Of Israel
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There is no one else beside the Creator, and therefore, everything comes from above: both awakening from above and awakening from below. The only difference is in how we feel this awakening: each one personally or all together in general. Personal awakening is not associated with a certain period; each person receives it in due time; according to his place in the common system, he begins to advance, to study, and comes to the group.
