In the News (translated from Gazeta.ru): “Enslaved Tyrants” The government leaders do not control their countries however they wish, but are obliged to consider the needs of the society. A leader has to adjust his actions to real life.

My Comment: Everyone understands this. And it is exactly why we need a broad public education system. Everyone without exception must be educated about the new laws of Nature, which are now being revealed in society. To the degree the public will be enlightened, the leaders will be able to make more efficient reforms.

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A question I received: Right now there are local Kabbalah courses taught by Bnei Baruch starting all over Israel. Who  would you recommend take these classes?

My Answer: There are no restrictions here. Egoism has grown to such a great level that the whole world has to study Kabbalah. Baal HaSulam writes in the newspaper, “The Nation,” that we must all take our seats at the school desks and study.

Ignorance of the new system of our interrelationships (the “Mutual Guarantee“) in today’s world puts us in great danger. And we’re the ones causing this, because we don’t know how to behave properly. We must study the rules and laws of the new, global world, lest we cause tremendous harm to ourselves.

This is why we must all educate ourselves. The Kabbalah courses taught by Bnei Baruch focus on articles and other materials that will help any person to find his place in this life, to understand the world and his own place in it, to uncover what is required of him and how he can best realize himself in the new conditions.

Even if the material appears theoretical and detached from our lives, in reality the material is special, containing the Light that returns one to the Source. In other words, the materials contain the force that corrects us. Everything studied in these courses is necessary for understanding the world and for performing inner corrections.

Therefore, I highly recommend these courses to everyone. And if there are a few dozen people living in a particular place that want to study there, we are willing to go there in order to conduct a course. We really hope that these efforts will help the world to move in the right direction.

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Question: How do you raise a child through reward and punishment?

Answer: We don’t have any other means. That’s how the Creator treats us. We must learn from Him and treat children as He treats us. That’s the only thing we can do – learn how to rear children from the Creator’s attitude toward us.

We should study the way He controls us, the way He plays with us, pretending to mislead us, though in reality He misleads our ego. We will then begin to understand that He misleads our ego wisely, in order to show us how to become like Him.

He constantly increases our reward and its quality. He doesn’t just give us sweets, but changes the ways of encouraging us so we’ll advance and shift from the value system of “sweet vs. bitter” to the value system of “true vs. false.” In fact, Adam HaRishon fell when he confused the “true-false” and the “sweet-bitter” evaluations.

Therefore, when we rear children, we too must help them to gradually understand that they shouldn’t be making efforts just to receive sweets, but to constantly raise the value of “the truth.” This is the most important thing, in spite of the bitterness they will feel as they replace the “sweet” with the “truth.” This is what true education is!

In order to do this, we have to give them examples, invent games, and provide the support of the society. All of this must be a part of the education system. There is nothing more important than this. In fact, the only problem in the entire world is the problem of education. If we manage to educate just one generation that will understand the Upper Governance and will react towards this governance correctly, then we won’t need to do anything else, because the purpose of our life is to establish a connection with the Upper Force.

Everything comes from this force, and hence the only relationship one must establish is one’s relationship with the Upper Force. One must clearly reveal it so he will actually see it, be in dialogue with it, interact with it, and have a clear connection with it. This is the only thing every person needs and this is why we need the wisdom of Kabbalah – the Creator’s revelation to his creation.

We must reveal Him now, while living in this world, as otherwise we won’t know how to live, how to rear our children and how to raise the next generation. These are all things that are necessary for us, and this is why the wisdom of Kabbalah is being revealed now: because we desperately need it.
(From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose,” on 02.17.2009)

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A true guide knows everything that might happen along the path and does not lead people astray. This is how each and every teacher in the world should be teaching. Teachers of mathematics, physics and other pragmatic subjects are able to educate students successfully because they are teaching children about real laws that exist in Nature. They are transferring their own knowledge and experience. So, the teachers of the exact and natural sciences are ok – they don’t lie to their students.

However, the teachers who want to teach children about how to behave in life do not provide correct or realistic information. First of all, they do not live properly themselves, they do not know what will happen tomorrow, and they are unable to imagine what will happen to a child, because they have never advanced along the same path. So, when it comes to schooling, the school teachers should only teach mathematics, physics and other exact sciences.

However, when it comes to true upbringing, the only ones who can teach are those who have ascended up the spiritual ladder and are found a few degrees above the children. It doesn’t matter if the students are small children or big children – a student may even be 60 or 70 years old.

This is why we have so many problems between parents and children. The parents are still on the level of the egoistic desire, in a world that’s already moved forward. They are like dinosaurs that fell into a new world! They still want to teach their children, but their children have a new level of desire and need new teachers. So there is a two-fold mistake here! A parent belonging to a previous century is teaching a child who lives in the current century, but that child needs a teacher from the next century. There is a gap between the two degrees, and we still allege that we can teach our children something.

We do not fit the children when it comes to their desires or their fulfillment. So it’s no surprise that we do not succeed in education. Today, a new, global connection between everyone is being revealed, and we, the whole world, are completely out of touch with it.

So if we are talking about making individuals into human beings, about preparing them for life, then the teacher can only be someone who has ascended a few degrees higher. He cannot just be someone who has graduated from a college or university. After all, how could he possibly teach a child how to behave in the world if he does not understand what happens in this world himself?
[3513]
From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “One Precept,” on 3/18/2009

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A question I received: A twelve year old child was stabbed yesterday by another child. How do you explain it when such young children have a desire to hurt someone?

My Answer: The cruelty in children’s relationships comes from our common nature – the desire to receive. This desire is always growing and there is nothing anyone can do about this. In the past, children were more naïve and better disciplined, so it was possible to control them. But it’s no longer possible, and therefore people aren’t even trying to control them.

While in the past teachers were able to control children by shouting at them and giving them orders, now they are afraid to enter a classroom since they don’t know what awaits them there. This isn’t a fault of the teachers or the educational institutions, because they lack the right method. They are trying to create an educational system, but man’s egoistic desires cannot provide them with the correct solution, since we are just as bad as the children.

Education happens only by example, but we lack the proper model of existence ourselves, so we can’t set an example for them. What do we show them on TV and on the Internet, and all the other places they get their information from? I think the world is already beginning to understand that it has no power over the next generation. The process is already out of control and it’s impossible to do anything about it. However, it’s a good thing that the evil is being revealed, because people will now be able to hear the right explanation. When the education crisis really breaks out, people will be ready to listen.

We must explain to people that the young generation is unable to exist within the boundaries of the old educational system. Similarly, we are unable to correct the economy, family relationships, culture, and education within the boundaries of the old systems. People must hear that the entire gamut of problems has a single solution. So what is that solution?

People have to study the Upper Governance, which comes from absolute goodness on the one hand, but strictly defines our behavior on the other. This is education: It is teaching those who are just starting their lives about the connection with the Creator or the Upper Force, because the Upper Force is the only thing that influences us. This is what we need and what we have to give our children: a plan, a program, a science, an understanding. We have to teach them about how to achieve success in the reality they are living in.

People have to be taught about the most important thing: how to live well! And they will be able to live well only under the condition that they reveal the Absolute Goodness. And this is the essence of the wisdom of Kabbalah: to enable a person in this world to speed up the revelation of the Creator.
(Excerpt from the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Essence of Religion and its Purpose,” on 02.17.2009)

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A question I received: I watched your discussion with Anatoly Ulyanov about raising children. The upbringing I received lacked everything you said should have been done, from Kabbalah’s viewpoint. So I did not receive the necessary education. And it so happens that I have an unconventional sexual orientation, which worries me. How can I make up for what I didn’t receive through my upbringing?

My Answer: Only the Upper Light, which descends upon a person during the study of Kabbalah, can correct him to the degree he desires to understand himself and reveal the hidden world that surrounds him. He will then feel the whole scope of the world through his new qualities, and this will correct him. Besides this influence, there is no other means of correction in our world. See item 155 of the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot.”

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A question I received: Do the mass media and our culture have to change?

My Answer: Definitely. In fact, this is the most important thing. The mass media must serve as a global education system, explaining the essence of the globalization process. This should be their primary responsibility.

All the sources of communication and all the channels supplying people with information should spend 24 hours a day giving people the knowledge of how to organize life under the new conditions. And in truth, this is the only thing people want to hear because everything around them is falling apart and this knowledge gives them the only thing that can save them.

If millions of people begin to think about this, then this thought will be prevalent everywhere. After all, there is no distance for thoughts, so whatever people think about in one place becomes instantly expressed in other places. The power of thought of millions of people is enormous, and it can make everything become revealed at lightning speed. As a result, the correction will happen much faster than the corruption. While the process of the fall of the generations took place over millennia, the correction can happen in just a few months.

Kabbalah explains the process of our development. No one goes through this process by their own will; everyone is forced to participate by the pressure of the circumstances. No one asks our consent to participate in this process, because egoists would never agree to give something up and unite.

However, people will be able to do this because they desire to get rid of their troubles! And they need to know that there is no other solution. The explanation must be based on evidence taken from nature and science and it must cite the opinions of scientists and specialists in the field of economics and finance. Then people will become convinced that there is no choice but to unite in the global world, which is dominated by the “butterfly effect.”

There is no other choice – we will have to do this! What else is left for us to do, if this is what Nature demands? We can either die or live – the choice is ours!
(From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “One Precept,” on 03.08.2009)

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A question I received: Robert Kiyosaki has already answered the question about education in the book, If You Want to Be Rich & Happy, Don’t Go to School. He writes that an unruly class society starts forming when a teacher forces the students to solve the problems individually, without giving them a chance to help the weaker students, and even with a risk of being punished for helping them. Children actually want to help each other, and they should be supported in this, but instead they’re being punished for it.

The entire history of schools shows that they raise kids to be egoists and individualists, using grades, competition for who’s better, and so on. If schools would teach kids to work in teams, if the kids had to unite to solve problems, we would raise a completely different generation of people. Therefore, all the egoistic flaws are developed in childhood, in our schools.

My Answer: I agree with you. We are trying to solve these issues through the education system that we are now creating. The main purpose of this system is to develop an environment that will give everyone a desire to cooperate.

A school is, first and foremost, a correctly organized society of children, which develops every student in a certain way. The society sets the examples, values and goals that will help every student to become a very special person. Nothing like this exists in the world yet, not even in any private school. And that’s because schools don’t set the goal of perfection and equivalence to Nature. Therefore, there is no Correcting Light (Ohr Makif) there.

The fact is, it’s the Light, not the environment, that corrects a person. The environment just helps one draw the Light. Therefore, no system or method of education will work besides the Kabbalistic one, because the latter draws the Force or Light of Correction upon a person.

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In the News (from The New York Times): “Our Greatest National Shame” Our No. 1 priority must be education. That makes the new fiscal stimulus package a landmark, for it allocates more than $100 billion toward education. Education Secretary Arne Duncan argues: “We have to educate our way to a better economy, that’s the only long term way to get there.”

My Comment: It’ll be a real pity if this sum won’t bring any improvement. And chances are – it won’t, because in order to create a new education system, it’s necessary to create the right environment for every student – one that will elicit new, altruistic qualities in them (see the article “The Freedom”). In other words, schools must provide a full day of classes, and the children should only go home in the evening, to spend time with their parents and to sleep. In addition, the interactions among the kids should be organized according to a new, integral program that will teach them how to connect with society and to take every member of society into consideration.

However, in the above case, the money will be spent on the kind of education that turns children into various specialists, whereas the real problem lies in upbringing – how to turn a child into a Human Being.

(The above picture shows me together with my son and daughter.  Both were raised in a Kabbalistic education system and now have successful careers in Kabbalah.)

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In the News (from National Institute of Drug Abuse): “Similarities and Differences [of Ritalin] Compared to Cocaine were Found” Investigators funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse have shown that the medication Ritalin),which is commonly prescribed to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), can cause physical changes in neurons – in some cases, these effects overlapped with those of cocaine.

My Comment: Everything in nature is a desire to be fulfilled. In humans, this desire undergoes constant development and determines all our progress.

Our children have new, global desires, which we suppress because we don’t know what to do with them or how to develop them correctly. As a result, we are ending up with a generation that has been mutilated by us, whose lives are full of suffering, and who are very inclined to drug use.

The solution is to institute a global, Kabbalistic education from the earliest childhood. This education is specifically intended for the new global demands that our children have. We at Bnei Baruch have been working with our children this way for several years now, and we see the wonderful results of this kind of education. Starting next year, we will be opening our own school for four hundred children.

My younger daughter (shown with me on the photo above) was brought up with a Kabbalistic education, and she went on to receive a PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah. My eldest daughter holds a PhD in Biology and Genetics. My son is a publisher.

Educating kids about the laws of nature, giving them a Kabbalistic education that reveals these laws to them, helps them to grow up to become people who are in harmony with nature.

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