We are all egoists. So how can we organize regular life in human society in a way where we won’t eat each other?

That is why people have agreed that we can’t manage alone, after all. Other people serve me in one way, and I serve them in some other way. Without that we just can’t manage. Once we understand this, we come to an agreement: Let’s do this without waiting for a disastrous situation. Let’s do it out of mercy: I give a little bit to you, and you give a little bit to me.

Suppose I am driving in a car and someone in front of me suddenly stops. Then I also have to stop. If there is someone standing in front of me in line, then I have to wait. I spend time, gas, and money on others because we have all agreed on mutual sympathy and have to pay for it.

We create funds to help one another, such as medical funds and retirement funds. A person understands that it’s worth it for him to pay the medical fund even if he is healthy because his egoism recognizes how it will benefit from this. That is how we make concessions ahead of time because we need each other. This is “mercy”: We are willing to bestow to others in specific ways because we won’t survive without them.

As a result, people divide into two categories: Some promote “mercy,” wishing for everything to be “pretty,” while others support the category of “truth,” which says: “Mine is mine and yours is yours.” So whose side is truth on? The answer is: neither.

However, if every person clings to what is his, then society is torn apart to pieces, whereas if we add mercy, then we can somewhat soften or sweeten the situation. As a result, human societies throughout history have differed from one another by the correlation of these two approaches.

Society can be softer or harsher. In its pure form, capitalism does not like to play around: If you earned it, receive what’s yours, but if you haven’t earned it, then you can starve to death. Others understand that this is not a solution because hungry people will come and rob you, and maybe will even murder you. So it’s worth it to give them something “out of mercy.”

That is how humanity develops, but it cannot achieve piece on this path. Granted, truth is the lot of the strong, and mercy is the lot of the weak, but justice stands in the middle as the foundation of the scale so our cups could sway to and fro.

That is how society keeps itself back from self-destruction, but this does not bring it any closer to real peace – to conciliation and mutual completion.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/11, “Peace in the World”

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Now is a time of serious economic processes taking place. The crisis is rising up again in a new wave and this requires the world’s elite circles to make decisions they are not ready to make. That’s because everyone will have to make the shift to limited consumption.

The consumer society is over! The Earth does not have the resources to support unrestrained development. The golden billion cannot offer its way of life and its ideals to the other six billion. And by that it evokes intense hatred toward itself as well as the desire of others to rob it.

Nature does not have the energy reserves for us to keep increasing consumption and among other things, that means we gradually have to give up nuclear energy. We unwillingly have to start becoming a society of “intelligent” consumption, meaning consume to the degree of necessity, where necessity means “sufficient for existence” in the modern conditions.

The modern political and economic elite have justified and legitimized their power by promising people increasingly higher levels of consumption. This is exactly the reason why they cannot change the direction from ever increasing consumption to “intelligent consumption.”

Any decision said out loud will inevitably cause a drastic conflict in society and most importantly, distrust of the elite because in the any case society will understand that people’s income will no longer increase, that there are very difficult times ahead for us, and this will last a long time. Moreover, the consequences of this pressure in society are unpredictable….

A new ideology of development has to come forth, and it won’t be in the direction of consumption anymore. A new political elite has to be raised to suit the new ideology, and that elite will be able to change the system. Yet, the elite of the past won’t disappear. It will fight back. That is why it is necessary to provide a wide explanation of the objective laws that are being revealed to us, of nature’s limited resources, and the integral society. This will create wide ranging social support and a critical mass of interested people.

It is necessary to develop a wide social discussion about the objective need to replace the consumer society’s egoistic development with global, integral development that is in balance with nature, meaning one in which society consumes from nature to the degree that provide every person with the necessary and deserving existence. An intense the social discussion will enable a quick emergence of a large group of people who will gradually discern how to build society upon the new principles.

This will give rise to a new understanding of the methods to manage business and government, how to unite the ideological scheme with the governmental scheme, as well as to develop the concepts of the new governance and the ways of transitioning to it.

Closing comment: The “simplest” method of restricted consumption can be exemplified through a prohibition on advertising, which is “the engine of trade.” It is necessary to gradually prohibit advertising that compels people to buy an enormous amount of products that they don’t need at all, with the exception of the products that society determines to be necessary.
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Question: Today the example of the united Europe shows us that openness and integration are not very effective. In fact, they’re actually counter effective. What is missing there?

Answer: The missing link is mutual bestowal. The Europeans have created a common market. In the Kabbalistic terminology, a market is the lowest possible place where people only sell and buy things. And that is what the Europeans have in common. That is the basis upon which they united.

This kind of unification is devoid of the participation and cooperation that we are talking about. It is merely a low, wicked, material linkage. As a result, they will reveal such massive hatred among them that they won’t be able to bear it. The situation threatens to blow up in a big explosion.

There is no agreement between the Europeans. They are simply afraid that things will get even worse otherwise. Europe had counted on uniting against America—but is that really a union? Taking immigration into account, it is crippled on both legs.

Real consolidation takes place by virtue of empathy, on the human level, when we are united into a single system.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/15/11

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Question: Baal HaSulam advocated a fair distribution of wealth and total equality in the world. How did he intend to accomplish that, and doesn’t it look like a communistic idea?

Answer: Equal distribution of goods is impossible unless man receives compensation for it. However, for the willingness to accept material equality he will receive spiritual ascension that will give him assurance, security, peace, success in life and family, health, and all abundance. Is it not worth compromising the material life somewhat in exchange for a heavenly life, as in the paradise?

If you do, you will free yourself from the yoke of this world that brings you problems, competition, and attacks you from every side. It is necessary to provide compensation to man in his life, and then he will be more agreeable.

Baal HaSulam certainly didn’t intend to enforce egalitarianism as communists did in Russia. Compensation is peace and the upper world.

But for that, it is necessary to spread the wisdom of Kabbalah. Until a person understands where the solution lies and gains a new outlook, he will not let go of what he now has. Otherwise, it will lead to wars since nobody will want to give up anything they own and share it with others.

A fair distribution of wealth is viable only in exchange for spiritual ascension.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/2/2011, Lesson on Money

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If we honestly analyzed ourselves, what goes on with us in this world, what we are living for, in what form, how we waste our lives and for what purpose, we would reduce our consumption of natural resources to the bare necessities. We would redistribute all the surplus so as to provide it for the entire population of Earth. However, everybody’s participation in this must be mandatory.

If there is nothing to do for all these seven billion, they have to go to school. It will signify that they are earning “a living.” Who said that it is necessary to work 15 hours a day? Look how some primitive tribe lives, how much time they spend on preparing food and resting. But all we do is work, all our life.

We perform unnecessary actions. Life is not meant to fill the whole 24 hours with sleeping-eating-working. What is the worth of such life? All those who can’t be given a job to do must be seated to read Kabbalistic books. This will be their “earning” the Light that Reforms for everyone.

Those who desire to study must do so, while those who wish to work should work. There are people who can work only with their hands, and there are the opposite, those who can only produce ideas and are not drawn to manual work.

Everyone will have an occupation because he or she will merge with the Creator and thereby will channel the life force to us. So let them do it! Let them do nothing but sit with the others, study, and discuss their connection with the Creator. Thereby, they will be providing everyone with the life force, instead of food, clothes, and everything else. And then, the whole population of the world will have everything they need.

There is no need for anything but necessities. This is the way to work, the correct arrangement. Then, we can have another several billion people in the world: If they be working on making the connection with the upper Light, with the Creator, there will be total abundance in the world.

And this is the only path to harmony and real security.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/2/2011, Lesson on Money

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Man’s basic need is stability and security: He wants a stable economy, living conditions, and physical health. This is a normal instinctive desire to feel secure, which is necessary for the animate body. Animals possess it as well and store food for the winter.

But since our egoistic desire is a degree higher than that of all other creatures, we want to have protection that would serve as life insurance to us; moreover, we think we will live forever. And besides, we wish to provide the most reliable security for our children.

Although we see that it does not work in practice, we still can’t drop the idea. We live in a very unstable and insecure world, and hence it is clear enough that it is impossible to provide any insurance for tomorrow for ourselves or our children by working hard in order to make lots of money.

It is a well known psychological problem. I would say that it is a spiritual problem because if we admit that there is the upper force that arranges our entire life and controls everything that happens to us, no matter what we do, then we cannot provide any security for ourselves.

Based on our life experience, we think that the richer, healthier, and stronger a person is, the more confident and content he may be regarding his future, compared to everyone else. But we see that even that it gives no guarantees and can change in an instant.

Therefore, the wisdom of Kabbalah offers a person another solution. If you connect with the upper force, the only force that rules the entire creation in every case and at any time, it will be the most reliable guarantee of your security.

We were intentionally given this sensation of insecurity, helplessness, fear, and all sorts of doubts so we may find the correct answer in them. That is, we feel insecure so as to realize what can truly give us a reliable security for every occasion in life.

You may think that the Creator is too distant, exists in some other world, and you don’t feel connected to Him (although you can get to know Him). But, here, in our world, the best type of security is to arrange for yourself an environment that will always support and assist you, an environment that would take responsibility for caring for everyone as much as it would care about all the others.

If man lived under conditions of this mutual assistance, it would provide him with security in everything as well.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/2/2011, Lesson on Money

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It is said: “Go and earn from each other,” meaning that we constantly exchange, pass desires and fulfillments to each other, and everybody pays the other and fills him or her with something. Our world is a whole, global, and integral system where it is necessary to provide a covering on every desire, with which we “pay” for its realization and fulfillment.

In order for this whole system to reach its final state of perfection and harmony where all desires will be fulfilled and receive coverage, everyone has to acquire a screen on the desires unfolding within. In other words, everyone needs to have a “coverage,” “money,” to pay for all their needs.

It’s not required to pay with money. One can pay with a good attitude, a smile, mutual services, or labor: “You give me something, and I give you something.” It doesn’t have to be a commodity-money exchange since the definition of “money” is much broader than just paper bills.

Money is payment for the fulfillment of desire, which measures the need and its fulfillment. After all, we don’t know how big a desire is because it is hidden in us. Fulfillment comes from Above, and we can’t say anything about it in advance either. And only by the amount of exerted effort can we judge the value of something, observing how the need and its fulfillment meet by way of my effort, my screen. This is the only way to perform self-evaluation.

In the end, “money” measures the value of my spiritual Partzuf, the value of man. The greater his screen, his ability to tie his desire with the Light, the greater a person. And the greater a person, the closer he is to the Creator, which is defined by his “money,” that is, the size of the coverage, the screen.

In our world, money transforms into coverage of egoism. We do not cover our ego with it, but only increase it and try to fulfill it as it is, egoistically. As a result, we remain empty since fulfillment cannot be received and kept egoistically. If fulfillment enters without the anti-egoistic screen, but rather at the expense of our “fake” money, our egoism, it immediately doubles the desire, and we remain twice as empty as we used to be before.

It means that “the righteous earn twice, while the sinners lose twice,” that is, the latter feel twice as empty. But this internal void is also their revenue because in the end, it will lead them to correction, which is called the “path of suffering.”

Thus, our world develops due to the realization of egoistic desires. In the end, we find ourselves in a terrible, inevitable crisis. It isn’t a monetary crisis; it is a crisis of egoistic use of money. It is a gradual process, and we are yet to witness its full scope in the near future. It will unfold parallel to the wrongful use of one’s ego, exploitation of others, and so forth—all vices of egoism will get revealed at once.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/1/11, Lesson on Money

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At first, society was based on the barter system, but when egoism matured and it became difficult to exchange goods directly, it was necessary to find something to replace it with in order to simplify the process. At that point, it was decided to use precious stones and metals, which were valued,  for trade. They served as an equivalent for any purchase.

Then, coins came to life based on the necessity to verify whether a metal was real gold or silver. Moreover, every king, due to his ambitions, wanted to hammer his profile on the coins, while a state was eager to establish symbols of national and religious identity. This is how special seals on gold and silver bullion came to be.

In the beginning, only a stamp served as proof of authenticity of a metal evaluated by its weight, but later on, it acquired its own worth and received monetary power. It became clear that it wasn’t the material itself that was needed, gold or silver, but rather a stamp with someone’s profile, a unique form accepted everywhere as an equivalent of value. And that is when they started to make coins from simple metals.

But behind every such coin there was a gold standard. A stamp of a certain ruler certified that somewhere in his treasury there is gold backing up the value stated on the coin and anyone can bring it in and exchange it for gold.

This is how it was up until our times when we entered the era of arrogant egoism and completely lost control over it. They started to print much more money than there is gold backing it, and it’s impossible to redeem it any longer. Money is losing its value, and it lacks not only an authentic backup system, but even a fake, artificial one that used to support the entire monetary system.

In truth, no bill has coverage! After all, there is more money circulating in the world than all countries together are able to backup. And now the world is shifting to plastic cards which are not precious metals, coins, or even paper bills; they are mere pieces of plastic that help us transfer money from one bank and part of the world to another. And while we are doing so, nothing really moves; it’s just that the numbers get copied and sent to a new address on the computer.

And it’s not without a reason. Behind all this, there is a very sublime internal philosophy of screens, Lights, and desires. It speaks of our losing connection with the covering, the screen, which despite being an egoistic one, had previously served as equivalent to our effort in time, space, and motion.

We are beginning to value all this less and less since our ego is maturing and becomes greater than the real covering! And if I have a machine which can print money without coverage, so I print it!

I think the financial system is facing a great collapse since it cannot continue like this forever.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/1/11, Lesson on Money

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A brief look at the history of money: Money is an ancient invention; we know of coins that circulated as early as 650 years BCE. In the beginning, money was evaluated by weight and cost of the metal itself, but metal coins were gradually replaced by paper bills. At the start of the 17th century, Europe was already printing paper money.

Up to this day, money remains in the center of everybody’s attention and causes numerous arguments while traveling from hands to hands and serving as a medium of connection between people. What is the cause of such advanced use of money?

There are only Light and desire (Kli) that we need to tie together. This connection appears due to the fact that each conceals their ego under a screen that is called a “covering” (Kisufa). “Money” (Kesef) derives from this word. If I have a covering on my desires and hence am able to use them correctly, it means that I possess a screen, a covering, “money.”

As a result of this action in our world, as the reflection of the spiritual root in the material branches, there is a rule in our world that any reception must be preceded by an effort. This work is what creates the covering on desire. The degree of my willingness to work for the sake of some desire determines the extent of its eventual fulfillment.

In the ancient times, people worked solely to eat, similar to animals that are searching for food all day long and live for the animate body’s needs: food and procreation. Money is the most natural object, and even if there isn’t any and a person is face to face with himself, nature, or the Creator, he still pays with his effort to satisfy the desires. After all, during this work, new desires emerge in him, to fulfill which he needs to work, in order to build a screen, a covering over them.

Therefore, the need to have money, the screen, appears at the moment when desire emerges. Over the course of the entire history people constantly bartered: “You give me this, I give you that,” paying if not with money, then at least with a smile, gratitude, good attitude. There is no chance to take something from someone having not paid. We either pay voluntarily or forcefully, following regulations accepted in the society. And if we don’t, then the upper system will definitely clean up our debts in the end and return the balance to the merchant.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/1/11, Lesson on Money

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Question: If you look at the Internet, you see that what most people are looking for is an answer to the question of how to get out of debt, how to come out of a minus in their bank account. Can you comment?

Answer: First of all, we are being kept in a minus deliberately. A minus is a kind of slavery, a kind of connection between people that is used to confuse a person and in this way to enslave him. We do not understand this and consider ourselves free. But you are not free in any regard. If you cannot freely feed yourself or your family today, then to the same degree, you are tied down by iron chains. And if, in addition, you have a minus in your bank account, then you are enslaved completely.

All kinds of taxes, payments, and debts that every person has are a form of modern slavery. It seems like everything is OK, you can borrow some more money, things are not so bad….

This new period of people living in debt began recently. Entire nations live in a minus. The debt of certain nations amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s a minus in the country’s account. And then you can’t do very much. Your accounts could be “blocked” so you won’t receive anything until you pay up. Thus, an entire country becomes enslaved until it begs, “I am ready to do anything you tell me—just give me food!” Like a slave working for food. This is exactly what is happening to people and entire nations, and there is no way out of the minus!
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/1/11, Lesson on Money

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