Introductory Lecture “The Power Of Unity” – 11.01.11
Posted on November 1st, 2011
The world is standing at the threshold of a dramatic rise in unemployment. Millions will be thrown to the curb without the slightest opportunity to find a job so they could put bread on the table. A new source of income has to be made available to them—integral study.
We must understand that by attracting the Light that reforms, by acting for the sake of common unity, by studying the laws of the new world and the principles of life in it, a person deserves to have the minimum conditions for a respectable existence provided for him. This enables him to become a positive and necessary part of society.
We have already contacted people who make decisions, offering them this path. A person who was laid off cannot be left to his own devices at home or thrown to the whim of fate. This will make him cruel, besides turning him into a bum who will never be able to go back to work. Having no other choice, he will resort to drugs, criminal activity, and so on. If we don’t keep people busy, things will escalate to a social collapse.
In this regard we have to understand that the new activity, studying, will be the correction. It is simply necessary for us to have people sit down at the desk to study. This is not a pittance by any means nor a chance to “kill time,” but a social function that is necessary to all. In essence, the people who are studying will already begin working on society’s rehabilitation, and that is exactly how we will treat them as well.
And those who keep their jobs should also be involved in the study. Maybe they will split their working hours with the people who were laid off, and then everyone will be able to study for half a day. This routine has to be instituted lawfully. After all, we are all a single society and we all want social justice. That means we have to distribute our time justly: Work is divided among everyone, and so is the study, and on average, everyone receives similar salaries.
Life itself is dictating this approach to us. It is impossible to continue chasing the “American dream.” It has already come crashing down and it’s time for us to wake up.
Question: Is this kind of study enough to solve all the problems?
Answer: Yes. After all, it’s not simply a study, but various types of training, as well as a connection to the current events and phenomena, an explanation of the single world and the need for a good interconnection. A person learns to unite with others and starts to understand that by virtue of that, we awaken the forces concealed within us. They are already contained in the integral society and they will bring the necessary order to it. With their help, we will obtain the same qualities as nature and will stop being a faulty, antagonistic appendage in it. We will go from being a cancerous tumor to an integral part, thereby attaining unity and rehabilitation of the whole world.
Unity is our salvation. Only by uniting will we attain results. Today we are discovering the fact that human society is a single whole, and we must consciously go along with this tendency from our own desire. It’s time to understand that there is no other way to go.
Baal HaSulam says that this does not involve anything more than a psychological difficulty. A person is unable to change himself from within: It’s easy to turn this lever, but hard to reach it. However, as soon as he grabs hold of it, the world will change to the opposite with one movement.
[59209]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/30/11, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”
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Question: How does one bestow upon the world?
Answer: You take the desires of everyone and fill them as much as you can. That is called love. That is the act of love.
Question: Which desires do I take?
Answer: If you love them, you fill only their necessary desires. You won’t buy unhealthy food for your child. You buy him something tasty, but the main thing is that it is healthy.
Question: But what if he specifically wants fast food?
Answer: If you love, you can’t fill the desires that are bad for him. After all, you wouldn’t give your son a knife to play with if he asked for one. Isn’t that the same thing as fast food?
A true relationship, a real love, hardens you. The pity you feel now is actually egoistic pity; you feel sorry for yourself, not him. If you really had pity for him, you would give only what is healthy for him, only that which benefits his development and nothing else.
The child will get used to this very quickly. If you behave this way from the beginning, he won’t even ask you for things that are harmful.
[58815]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/26/2011, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”
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Question: Recently I took part in a conference which among other things discussed the alternative to the current system of graded matriculation exams. The previous methods are outdated, but still, don’t students have to be evaluated somehow?
Answer: Let’s get right down to the essence of the problem. The only thing we want from a person is for him to be able to correct his soul. This is why people are born and why they live, and if they don’t achieve this, they continue in the next life cycle. Therefore, a child’s recommendations or record should be written only from this standpoint.
What’s really important is not what grades a child receives in physics, chemistry, history, biology, and other subjects. Maybe he’s not very quick on the uptake in these subjects, or maybe he has the qualities needed to be a circus performer. Some people are drawn to music but aren’t very good at math.
Yet we put children into a classroom and stuff them all with the same material instead of developing their uniqueness and individuality. We place everyone under one standard, pack them into one stencil, and the press of the education system churns them out without any analysis.
This system was necessary 100-200 years ago to reforge simple farmers into factory workers. But today we are entering a new era. Production and agriculture will require just a few percent of all humanity. We will divide this burden between us, but mainly we will focus on the inner work. The time has finally come to develop man as an individual, to enrich his inner world. The level of attainment in various “external” subjects cannot be a criterion here. We are all different and this approach is simply incorrect.
As for the grading system, it has discredited itself completely. It forces a person to make bitter pittances, “Here’s what you need. Take it, choke on it, and leave me be!” After all, it’s not me developing, but others forcing me to demonstrate my knowledge orally and in writing.
A person’s formation cannot be approached by the common standards. It requires an individual approach. Therefore, the main subject should be the development of the individual: an understanding of life and interpersonal relationships. Who am I? What kind of world am I living in?
A person has to find out about this through conversations and discussions. His eyes have to be opened, showing him the pieces of the general puzzle and explaining their essence. It’s time to stop sitting children down with textbooks that give them knowledge but not understanding. This completely stupefies and disorients them. In the future people won’t be able to tear themselves away from the TV and will continue to live as if under hypnosis. Maybe this would be good for the authorities, but at the end of the day, there is nothing good about this.
Thus, grades have to be revoked. Every instructor and educator will provide his own response about a student. Classes will turn into groups and will take a joint path of study, unification, mutual activities, and most important, upbringing. A person should not be worried about grades, but on the contrary, if you have prepared him, then he checks himself by the right values, understands what he wants in life, what he belongs to, what he is capable of, what he can enjoy and how he can make others enjoy.
Then he will choose a profession that he is drawn to and in which he will be successful. After all, you teach and raise him ahead of time. You take him on trips to different places and show him life in its diversity and unity. During the school years he can already try his hand at different things and find his calling.
In the past people started learning a profession from childhood and learning from the adults’ experience. There has to be personal contact with professional instructors, rather than the formal relationships that exist today.
When people learn to find a profession that suits their personality, the number of people entering universities will decrease, and the universities will change as well. Today many people choose an academic profession by mistake or out of necessity, and then they suffer their whole lives. The education system has to give people more freedom. We are being destroyed by dry grades and study programs that are not adapted to modernity. From childhood they pressure people and limit their development.
Yet a person has to develop towards society and the environment, transitioning from self-evaluation and self-analysis to an analysis of the world. By harmoniously entering the world and society, he will feel that he is an absolutely integral part of it. This is the correct result of upbringing. A person will simply feel, “I am responsible for the world and the world is mine!” He will feel good in the world and the world will also recognize and value his contribution.
[58811]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/26/11, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”
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In the article “Peace in the World” Baal HaSulam examines the essence of the forthcoming transition that will raise humanity to a new level:
At first glance, the plan seems imaginary… But when we delve deeply into it, we will find that the contradiction from reception for oneself to bestowal upon others is nothing but a psychological matter… although self-reception manifests itself in us in various ways…all those are defined by one name, “pleasure.”
This is already clear today. Our essence, mind, feeling, and every cell of our bodies aspires to fulfillment. It can be felt simply as a rush of energy, or it can take on other forms until it reaches the psychological level, where we define it as pleasure. If my hand rests on the table, then it’s not my hand that enjoys it, but me. One way or another, fulfillment for us is always pleasure. It is what we all desire.
A question arises: If my matter only wishes to fulfill itself in order to experience pleasure, then am I able to maintain a connection with others? Am I able to participate in the life of the common system as nature dictates and enjoy it at the same time? If this is possible, if Baal HaSulam says that this is a psychological aspect, then maybe I will be able to confuse or trick myself into doing this? After all, psychology is an everyday affair, so to say. As a result, by carrying out nature’s demand, I will enjoy myself and will make others happy on a new, global level of being.
…what does one receive during one’s life? If we assume that one obtains twenty percent of pleasure during his lifetime and eighty percent of pain, then if we put them one opposite the other, there would still remain sixty percent of suffering unrewarded.
If a person made the right calculation, he would not be able to bear this life. In the most natural manner, he would immediately decide to end his life. The math is simple: “pleasure minus suffering is equal to….” Which is followed by a decision and its instant realization. However, we do not make an accurate calculation and therefore, we continue to live.
But this is all a private calculation, as when one works for oneself. But in a global calculation, the individual produces more than he takes for his own pleasure and sustenance. Thus, if the direction were to change from self-reception to bestowal, the individual would enjoy the entire production of what he produces without much pain.
If we make a calculation—how much can we receive from the whole world in return for what we give to it—then it really is worthwhile to live.
Thus, everything depends on a clear, precise, and transparent calculation: What do I have from reception and bestowal? And Baal HaSulam talks only about the material calculation here, leaving the spiritual calculation between the lines. In our world, one way or another everyone suffers and accepts it. However, if we clearly show a person all of his “income” and “expenses,” he will understand that he is being robbed to the bone. On the other hand, in the spiritual sense, he can record eternal life in his account, which is incomparable to the petty animate existence.
Thus, we are facing a psychological problem, and we have to view the world’s correction in this vein. All of these calculations, as well as the opportunities that become revealed by virtue of the Kabbalistic method, come down to upbringing. That means we have to create a system of education and upbringing, and then the world, which is in a desperate situation, will understand that it is actually at the starting point, at the threshold of a new beginning.
[58639]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/25/11, “Peace in the World”
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Question: Yesterday we held a round table in Afula which was attended by the city’s mayor, the head of the regional council, and leading specialists in education. The discussion was about the educational system in the 21st century. Our message was that children have to be prepared for life in the new, tightly interconnected world. The discussion participants did not object, but the impression was that we are trying to sow wasteland. Will people be able to understand the challenges facing humanity before it’s too late?
Answer: If they won’t, then suffering will force them to. A live example is Europe, which is deep in debt. Its leaders do not know what to do, yet they feel and understand that a split will entail a very serious catastrophe. On the other hand, they don’t know how to unite. Even multibillion tranches of assistance do not guarantee them a bright future.
It would be nice to pay once and get rid of the problem. This does happens in life: You make a concession and unload a great burden off your conscience. However, in this case nothing is working. Europe’s problem is a lack of communication.
Many people are already saying that it is necessary to create a single government or at least a single financial agency.
But how? After all, in that case it would be necessary not only to cancel the governmental boundaries, but all other boundaries as well, to annul all the differences. The common financial system means common social security and pension provision for everyone, common funds and conditions…. Stated differently, it requires the same attitude to everyone, and that means there will be one European nation and one boundary around all of Europe where everyone are equal.
Initially this concept is scary because nothing like this has ever happened in history. People don’t yet understand that the solution can only be found in unity. A person is driven by what he personally lacks, and unification is not on that list. Only great problems can push people to that. It is possible to advance forward under blows, meaning suffering or by common sense, either by a stick hitting you from behind or by a carrot enticing you from ahead. So choose one of the two.
For now we are driven by the stick, which is especially hard on the Europeans. But soon Americans will also feel its blows.
The only thing we can do is explain what is happening to the world, presenting the facts. An experienced expert sees and understands the problems. In the same way, all people have to see with their own eyes that which they do not notice yet. Using videos, movies, songs, and other media it is necessary to inform them of what is happening in the world today. Even if a person is far from this, he must nevertheless learn about it at least slightly.
That is how we will ameliorate the situation, turning every person into a specialist in some sense so he will be wary of heedless actions and will be willing to cooperate. Besides, by virtue of this we will gradually make the authorities aware of the need to organize an environment that provides people with an upbringing.
[57988]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/18/11, “Peace in the World”
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Our main objective right now isn’t to erase the differences between the richest and the poorest layers of the population. This is the goal for the future.
Right now, we face two urgent issues: The first is to raise everyone’s standard of living above the poverty line, and the second is to oblige everyone to learn about mutual guarantee, the new world, the new economy, the new relationships between people, and the changes that nature is obliging us to make. A university that will teach these things must be built, and studying there must be obligatory, just as it’s obligatory for children to obtain a secondary school education.
I consider these two conditions to be essential. After all, it is written: “If there is no flour, there is no Torah.” But on the other hand, if there is no Torah (the knowledge of the new world), there is no flour. For this reason, people must be educated and given flour, meaning the necessary income. For now, this is all that needs to be done.
I’m often asked what practical advice can be given to a person that has suffered enough and is ready to accept mutual guarantee. How can such a person enter into a new world? This is only possible by gradually educating a person. We can’t just wake up tomorrow and, by some miracle, be in a new world. Everything begins with a person’s inner correction. He has to learn to change by means of studying and through his environment. If many people study, they will come to this state by correcting themselves and influencing one another.
It’s the government’s duty, first and foremost, to provide the nation with the flour and with education. The nation has to demand that the government elevates everyone above the poverty level and educates everyone in the spirit of mutual guarantee. Without these two things, we won’t be able to go forward.
I don’t know where the government will find the necessary funding. The government could take it from the rich or begin saving for it by cutting back on their government officials, it’s up to them. Let’s calculate how much money is needed. It may not be such a large sum. One way or another, the government must provide the nation with the necessities. It won’t be able to play with people as has been done in the past, so it would be better to begin planning ahead of time.
I don’t think it should be an unrealistic amount of money. They should calculate it and figure out whose taxes should be raised and whose should be lowered. There may be a need for a new tax for everyone, except for those below the poverty line. This must be done. How could it be that there are people that don’t have enough for food?
It’s also necessary to teach people, through television programs or workshops, how to manage a household. No matter what their income, people can’t live thoughtlessly and do whatever they want. People have to learn to manage their means. Quite often, people don’t know how to do this.
There are specialists, scientists, economists, and psychologists who can explain how to properly manage money. If one has a certain amount of money for a family to live on for a month, these specialists can calculate how much could be spent and on what. There is an entire academic discipline called family and consumer sciences.
People will listen and become inspired gradually; they will suddenly gain a different attitude toward life. After all, people don’t think too much about what will happen to them tomorrow. We don’t feel it, and we aren’t taught this. Our schools are so removed from real life that they don’t teach the necessary things such as how to treat people, your future husband, wife, and children or how to manage a household so that there would be enough money for the month. All these things must be learned.
[57522]
From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, Shamati #219
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There are disorders taking place everywhere, including menacing cases that become expressed spontaneously and uncontrollably, and no one can predict the outcome of what is happening. Just like the crisis itself, its waves are rolling over everyone and no one is left in peace. The rich are forced to help the poor, while the poor manipulate the rich’s dependence on them….
Every economist in the world has his own opinion about the reasons for the economic crisis that is taking place. But we are forgetting that the crisis is not economic, but pertains to all of civilization: There is not one area of human activity that is not undergoing a crisis.
The crisis is happening in all of the social systems we have created: healthcare, public assistance, marriage and family, education and upbringing…. Undoubtedly, everyone started paying attention to the crisis when it became being expressed in the economic and financial realm because our survival depends on this directly. But to reveal its causes, we have to examine it as a whole, as a crisis of civilization.
The reason for the crisis is just one thing: every day, the world is becoming more interconnected and interdependent from within, by nature, and therefore, every day it is becoming more and more opposite to the external connections and culture that we have imposed on it in the form of separate countries, societies, opposing systems, and so forth. Precisely the difference between the world’s unity, which grows bigger every day, and the culture of separation we have created, is the crisis that is growing worse.
We are incapable of stopping the expression of the world’s inner globality and integrality. This is coming from its original nature, which we are unable to influence.
We also cannot observe the constantly growing opposition between the world’s inner structure, where its unity is being revealed, and the external one, humanity, where its divisions and contradictions are being expressed. This is evoking a multifaceted crisis inside of us.
The only solution to the problem of the developing crisis, our growing opposition to nature, lies in all of humanity’s gradual attainment of unity, mutual guarantee, and balance between humanity and nature, reasonable consumption. However, this contradicts our egoistic nature and therefore it is possible only when the environment exerts a wholesome, positive influence on every person.
For that, it is necessary to form a new social, personal consciousness that can be attained through universal global education and upbringing about the global, integral connection among all people that is being expressed in the world. To achieve this, every country has to decide to form an environment around its society, a setting for educational influence.
Creating a mass media system that involves scientists and experts who explain the new, global world, its new social laws, the need to follow them for the sake of survival, is the educational part. Creating large virtual and non-virtual connections that will pull people in, give them an example of unification and joy in it, is the part of upbringing.
Undoubtedly, by taking the first steps in this direction, we will immediately and clearly feel the crisis receding.
[57887]
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I need to create the type of environment and atmosphere around me which will constantly convince me of the fact that being interconnected and compliant with others will lead me to a safer and better life. It is a life where I will feel good.
You take the formula of total interconnection between all elements in nature and reveal it to people in a way that they can understand. You explain to them that it’s good to care for one another because it is in this way that you become similar to nature that surrounds you. In so doing, you will benefit a great deal because you obtain harmony with nature. Then, all forces of nature, both concealed and revealed, will be benevolent towards us, and we’ll benefit in every way.
Let’s conduct an experiment and see how much we’ll succeed in business and in economics if we start treating each other with more compassion, like members of one family. This is difficult; however, if we begin to convince each other subtly, without any pressure, then surely no one will lose.
I teach my children not to fight, not to provoke others, to be polite, to say please and thank you, to share, and to make friends. I teach them these things because I know that this behavior will provide them with maximum safety. I don’t teach my children to punch people or to steal because first and foremost, I want them to be safe in life. If they are kind to people, they will always find a more or less normal condition to exist in.
Why can’t we establish these interrelations worldwide? We’ve considered all this before—in our visions of utopian societies.
We have to enlighten people about the era we’re entering into. Everyone must understand that we live in the era when everything is interconnected, where everyone is like a part of a single family, and everyone is dependent upon one another. This is the era where we reeducate ourselves to become a global and integral element of society, the era where each person understands his uniqueness, his own unique contribution to the world, and for this reason should feel responsible for his part. Each person has to feel this way in relation to all the others.
[56978]
From the Talk on Global Education 9/7/2011
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