Question: How should one deal with financial losses correctly?

Answer: If the loss is noted, it is necessary to agree with it and go on with life, and try to make sure it will not happen again.

Question: Does studying the wisdom of Kabbalah change a person? Let’s suppose that he is stingy by inclination. How does spiritual development influence his attitude toward money?

Answer: A Kabbalist is found in many different situations, especially someone who has not yet passed through the Machsom (Barrier). So, sometimes he behaves absolutely precisely as one should. He doesn’t dismiss worldliness, but considers everything correctly. Sometimes, he suddenly falls and then begins to run to do something to make money to provide himself not only with what he needs for the present, but also for the future.

Interferences not typical of state one is in come, but they are sent specifically so that he would understand that “Do not believe in yourself until the day you die” (Pirkei Avot 2:4), that is, as long as his ego has not died.

Man is not immune from anything. On the contrary, a person must go through these situations.
[192288]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/3/16

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Question: From the point of view of the wisdom of Kabbalah, is a donation a type of spirituality, or is there a difference between “giving the surplus” and “giving the last?”

Answer: There are no kinds of donations that belong to spiritual impulses.

For everyone, there are strict rules that depend on which stage a person is in.

When a person begins to study, according to his degree of advancement, he begins to understand what he can really spend money on if he has surplus cash; it could be for buying books, coming to a convention, and the like. However, not every donation leads to something good!

For an uncorrected person, this donation is revealed as more egoistic, according to which he supposedly will gain the world to come.
[192285]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/3/16

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Question: What does it mean, “to sell your soul to the devil”?

Answer: Selling your soul to the devil means giving all your desires for money and even for knowledge in our world. Everything in our world is called the “devil” because all our corporeal engagements divert us from the spiritual path. The world “devil,” “Satan,” stems from the Hebrew root “Leastin” (to divert). It refers to any engagement in our world by which a person replaces his yearning for the true goal.
[192280]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/3/16

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Question: Money is the universal criterion for work in our physical world. What is the criterion for work in the spiritual world?

Answer: The term “money” (Kesef) in the spiritual world refers to yearnings or to a Masach (screen), stemming from the same root in Hebrew. The anti-egoistic Masach that a person acquires and by which he begins to feel the upper world above him is the criterion for a person’s work in the spiritual world.
[192201]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/3/16

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Question: In the modern world people listen to those who are very wealthy. How can you be heard of if you are not rich?

Answer: The world is advancing toward a great crisis, so the rich will soon have nothing to say as their wealth will gradually cease to be an influential factor.

The wealthy fear what is happening in society now just as you do. After all, as we advance toward a state in which we begin to live on a small allowance we will have almost no interaction with them. In the future a a large country and the whole world will live on small allowances, and then it will not matter whether you are rich or poor.

I hope that people will begin to understand that filling does not depend on money. Money itself cannot be a filling even in our corporeal world.
[192142]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/3/16

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Question: Can a person yearn for wealth and prosperity in his corporeal life and at the same time for spiritual growth? Can these two desires coexist?

Answer: No they cannot. First, a person must work for a living and provide for his family, and only then strive for the next state. Spiritual advancement should not be fulfilled at the expense of the family.

If you have a family, you have no right to neglect it; your children, wife and parents need material support. You have to work seriously to bring your whole salary home, to the last penny! Only after distributing it to the needs of your family, can you be free to engage in the wisdom the Kabbalah.

What is more, a Kabbalist must work not only in order to provide for his family, but also in order to be connected through his work with other people. He must be grounded.
[190642]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/3/16

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Question: What does the wisdom of Kabbalah say about the ritual of the golden calf, an expression that today refers to worshipping material objects and money?

Answer: The golden calf symbolizes the immense egoistic desire the children of Israel came out of Egypt with, rose above temporarily, until they suddenly fell into it and began to build the golden calf out of their desires for wealth and for using others.

In other words, the golden calf symbolizes the mutual desire for bourgeois development that humanity sees as a goal, as a substitute for Godliness.

The more we advance toward the attribute of love and unity, the greater the danger of falling into the desire of the golden calf, every step of the way.

Therefore, there is a method of integral unity according to the wisdom of Kabbalah that enables us to ascend above this growing desire, since this is how we develop.
[190613]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/3/16

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Question: Does the wisdom of Kabbalah provide an answer to the question of how to build a new economy and new attitudes toward production?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah treats this very seriously. Baal HaSulam wrote about this in the book The Last Generation. You can read or listen to my conversations with economists on the Internet in any language.

The current economy is a transitional economy for the last egoistic generation. Therefore, our world is in a huge crisis.

We must go through these situations so we will recognize the imperative of changing ourselves. The change doesn’t “come down” from above.

From above only opposing forces “come down.” In our time an immense opposition between the egoistic system of our world and the altruistic system of the upper world is being discovered so that we will understand we need to be similar to the higher system that the wisdom of Kabbalah talks about. So the need for self-improvement, correction, and re-education will appear in us.

I can say briefly that the economic system by which the next generation will live is a system in which every person in society will receive the rational necessities for his existence but no more than that.

Everything else will be accessible to him only to the degree that he will be connected to the higher system from which he will begin to receive fulfillment in the form of a unique force that will fulfill him directly because a person is actually a desire.

The desire is fulfilled with forces; if we shape the desire correctly, then we will have the ability to be fulfilled by nature because this force is found in it. And that is how he will exist in an eternal, perfect, infinite, everlasting state.

The world requires a new fulfillment, not a physical fulfillment. Therefore, the present economy exists to connect everyone together, manufacturing only what is necessary and distributing all of the products among us. In an ideal situation, this is the right mutual connection between producers, consumers, and service teams.

In contrast to this, the economy of the coming generation will be based on mutual connection between us and mutual fulfillment of each other, but without competition and only to the degree that is necessary for each one of us. All other kinds of connection will be directed only toward discovering the source of the higher fulfillment between us.
[191651]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/17/16

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Question: Can there be any other common denominator, apart from money, that could unite Europe?

Answer: It is impossible to find another standard that would be accepted by everyone. Therefore Europe will stay divided. It wanted to follow the example of America and so it decided to unite.

But this obviously won’t work since it is impossible to overcome the existing differences, to rise above hatred, difference in languages, religions, attitudes, and contradicting mentalities of the peoples.

The unification of Europe is a complex recipe that requires a very skilled chef who adds spices to this dish and knows exactly which country can be combined with another, what exactly to combine and in what amounts. Therefore, there is no point even dreaming of uniting Europe.

They wanted to unite to become like America against America, but it didn’t work.

Question: Is it possible that Europe will be able to unite around the common problem of radical Islam?

Answer: Radical Islam is another additional problem for Europe. And soon it will appear also in America, once radical Islam will be imported there with the help of its high-ranking supporters like Obama. He doesn’t hide his plans to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States during the year. It is his program and it is very important to him.

Today, both Europe and America show us their disappointment. It is possible to ignore it and continue to enjoy life, but there is a clear negative trend in society, in the economy, and in the family. The trend is simply terrible in both Europe and the US.

They are similar to a terminally ill person who just before death suddenly starts to feel better for a few days, seemingly comes to life and becomes healthier. However, it is just before he dies.

The unification of Europe is not sustainable. It is a direct consequence of ancient Babylon.

The group that followed Nimrod that selected money as a standard of measurement and dispersed all around the world now, after all its history of egoistic development, is discovering that this principle stopped working.

There is nothing wrong with it. After all, they have done their job in order to finally discover this. Meanwhile, Abraham did his job with the second group, finished it, and also prepared everything that is necessary.

Today the group of Nimrod is in a helpless state. But the group of Abraham is also helpless. The time has come for it to reveal his method. It is clear that we can’t be successful any other way.
[191633]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/8/16, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: The Americans managed to cultivate patriotism and national pride among its people. Why hasn’t this happened in Europe from the moment the Common Market was created?

Answer: This is obvious. In the US there is one army, one police, one capitol, and one White House. And although each state has its own laws and management, it is purely a municipal division. And this is one country and that gave America a completely different look compared to Europe.

In the European Union there are thirty languages, thirty countries, thirty different cultures, and even different religious faiths that were fighting with each other throughout the history. Each one has a claim against a neighbor over boundaries. Each one holds a grudge toward the nearest neighbors. Therefore, there can’t be such unity between them as in the US.

In the US they have adopted a single principle: money and freedom of economic enterprise. As long as you act within the legal framework, do what you want and then everyone will be evaluated according to the amount of money he has in his bank account.

Egoism blossoms if it is allowed to work freely. It can be weighed on these scales. How much do you weigh? Only hundred dollars? And he weighs a hundred million, this is a respected person. However, it gives a clear value to everything and the entire system works smoothly.

Everyone is evaluated this way, whoever he is: musician, writer, or professor. The first thing he is asked is how much he is worth, that is how much money he has in the account. And this determines everything.

And in Europe everything is blurry, because the Europeans value culture, education, and the ideals of the French Revolution, i.e., all different values that can’t be measured with money. The Europeans keep them and value them. On one hand, this is good. But on the other hand, these are not clear egoistic principles that can lead to a common denominator to evaluate all countries according to.

One standard of measurement for everyone is required, and there is none. For the Frenchman it’s his French wine, for the Belgian his dried fish, and for the German his beer—these are more important than the whole Europe. There weren’t such differences in America so it was easy to connect people who came just to become rich and to provide a good life for themselves. But in Europe there isn’t such a simple principle, it is divided into a number of different values.

There is no one standard, no common denominator between the countries, and therefore they can’t unite. The common denominator isn’t very simple—this something common between all of us, between you and me, between you and him. We need to do some kind of averaging between everyone, but in Europe this won’t work. It isn’t possible to unite even according to the American principle: to enrich and create a United States of Europe.
[19157]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/8/16, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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