News Report (from PloS One): New Japanese research concludes that greater interpersonal trust is strongly associated with a better quality of life, including physical, psychological, social, and environmental quality of life.

My Comment: Small egoism or an artificial suppression of egoism creates a sense of comfort, because “One who increases his knowledge, increases his grief.” This is why an animal’s life is easier than a human’s. But of course, reducing one’s egoism is no solution to a problem because you can’t fool nature. According to the Creator’s plan, egoism must continue growing until it demonstrates its own incompetence to its possessor, or in other words, until it shows us that it is the source of evil.

This is egoism’s primary mission, as it says in the Torah, “I created a helper against you” (Ezer Ke Negdo). One way or another, the growing egoism will force “its master” (as man thinks at first) or more correctly – “its slave” (as man later realizes) to use it. There is just one solution: comfort can only be achieved by correcting egoism. This not only enables a person to rise above egoism, but because one uses it to bestow, one senses the life of the general soul (Adam). In other words, one perceives his next level – beyond the existence of his animate body, the state of Adam, an existence that’s equivalent to the Creator. He reveals the Creator inside him.

There is so little separating us from happiness!

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News Report (from Times Online): The Milgram experiment was one of the most infamous experiments in history, offering compelling evidence that almost everybody is capable of great evil. Almost 50 years on, it has finally been repeated by scientists – showing that people today are still willing to hurt others when prompted by an authority figure.

The new research [by Dr. Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University in California], published in the journal American Psychologist, suggests that little has changed since Professor Stanley Milgram’s work. … Dr. Burger found that 70 per cent of participants were willing to continue delivering electric shocks once the learner had cried out in pain at 150 volts.

My Comment: If the experiment was done under natural conditions, the researchers would find that the subjects are 100% willing to use others in any way they can, even for the tiniest gain, and even without any gain at all. It’s because we assess our situation relative others, “The worse off others are, the better off I am.”

The events taking place will force us to reveal our evil nature and to recognize its evil power over us so much that we will agree to change it to love and goodness. In principle, it doesn’t matter if we receive or bestow, because it’s all about fulfillment! If we were born with the quality “to bestow” instead of the quality “to receive,” we would similarly be completely unable to understand how it is possible to “receive” rather than to “bestow.” This transition is simply a psychological problem. After all, fulfillment is the most important thing! For the time being a person sees fulfillment only within himself and evaluates it according to the misery of his neighbor.

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A question I received: What is “the evil eye”?

My Answer: When I look at others, my egoism evokes feelings of envy, hatred, and a desire for power. I don’t wish others well, or at least I don’t want them to do better than me. If I wish them well and want them to succeed, then it’s only in order for everyone to see that I’m even more successful.

Since we’re all interconnected, this “evil eye,” or this desire, influences others. Our life is a proof of that. This is what my teacher Rabash explained. Our desires work for us or against us, since we’re connected in a single system. Our desires “wander” inside this system, and we can’t escape our influence on everyone and their influence on us. Our thoughts about one another and about the world as a whole have produced our mutilated world and our sick society. We are the cause of all our suffering.

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A question I received: I had an interesting thought: maybe the reason for the current crisis isn’t that egoism is growing, but the opposite: that egoism has stopped growing, has ceased developing? When humanity’s egoism was growing, humanity constantly adopted new levels of social development. But now it resembles a horse that can’t pull anymore – it has stopped and is beginning to eat all the grass around it. And when that grass runs out, the horse will die.

Or the horse will have to find the strength to go on. If this is so, then it would be more correct not to cure people of the egoism that they already have, but on the contrary, to stimulate their egoism to grow to a new level, to reach a new level of desires. And we can do this by telling them about all the wonderful things that await them at the next stage.

My Answer: This is exactly what Kabbalah does: It doesn’t scare people with what’s happening in the present, but shows them the reason for the crisis in order to tear them away from making pointless efforts to “bring the dead back to life” using the old methods. In order to tear people away from egoism, it tells them about the evil in it; but then, in order to draw them forward, for them to desire something higher and better, it draws them to the study, which speaks only about the higher and better world.

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Questions I received on egoism and its correction:

Question: Almost every day we read news reports from different countries about parents killing their children, children killing parents, wives killing their husbands and husbands – their wives, grandchildren – their grandparents and so on. What is this? Is this one of the expressions of the global crisis?

My Answer: It’s the expression of the last stage of egoism at its initial stage. The prophets wrote that there will come a time when “compassionate women will boil and eat their own children” (Eikha 4:10). This is what will happen unless we heed the prophets’ warning and go through these times in a different way, in the Light of Kabbalah that corrects egoism.

Question: One way or another, the Creator compels us to develop through suffering. So a person doesn’t develop according to his free will, but out of necessity. But isn’t the Creator’s plan to create someone equal to Him, a partner? What kind of equality is this?

My Answer: The entire period of free will and independent development is still ahead of you. However, you can only be brought to it through suffering. Otherwise your egoism will push you to everything but spiritual development. Throughout all previous times, we developed only through the development of our egoism, but now we have been given the opportunity to develop under the influence of the Light. So now you have freedom – freedom of how to develop.

Question: “I want to be good to You in order for You to be good to me” – this is a quote from your book in Russian, To Be a Chosen Nation, p. 324. Isn’t this an egoistic intention? Or is it the corrected egoism?

My Answer: It is the corrected egoism. However, it isn’t always possible to understand the intention, because the words can only convey one’s desires. In other words: “I ask You to correct me and I will do anything for it.” And “good” means the quality of bestowal and love.

Question: Today every one of us egoistically feels like an individual. What will every one of us feel after the correction? Will each of us feel that the Common Kli is him?

Answer: Definitely, because this is how we were created: as parts of one whole. Instead of perceiving ourselves, we need to perceive the whole organism. The perception inside oneself is our world, whereas the perception outside oneself is the Upper World.

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My Comment: “Don’t take more than you need.” Our absolute egoism begets an extreme phenomenon in nature: egoism’s development leads to its own demise.

In the beginning of creation, a spark of the Upper Light gave birth to an infinitely tiny point of infinitely dense matter. However, this point contained the Upper, spiritual energy, and therefore it began to expand. The energy of this spark animates our entire world.

Today we have developed to reach the global egoism at its highest level, called “speaking” or “human.” We must now bring it to equivalence with the Upper Nature, with the spark of Light and the Upper World.

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Baal HaSulam. “Peace in the World“:
The nature of each and every individual is to exploit the lives of all other people in the world for his own benefit. And all that he gives to another is only out of necessity, in order to use the other even more cunningly, so that his friend will not feel it and will give in to him.

Baal HaSulam. “A Speech in Celebration of the Conclusion of The Zohar“:
How can man achieve complete equivalence of form with the Creator, so all his actions will be to give to others, if man’s very essence is only to receive for oneself? By nature, we are unable to do even the smallest thing to benefit others. When we give to others, we are compelled to expect that in the end, we will receive a worthwhile reward for it. And if one feels satisfied with his present state, he is unable to make even the smallest movement. Thus, how can one’s every action be only to bestow upon others and not at all for oneself?

Baal HaSulam. “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” item 20:
Our essence is as the essence of all the parts of creation, which is no more and no less than the will to receive.

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Baal HaSulam, article “Peace in the World”:

Man feels that all the creatures in the world should be under his own government and were created for his own private use. And this is a law of Nature that cannot be breached. The only difference between people is their choices of how to use the creatures: One chooses to exploit people by attaining the lowest desires, one chooses to attain power, while the third – to attain respect. Furthermore, if it could be done without much effort, every person would agree to exploit the whole world for attaining all three together: wealth, power and respect. This law is called the “Law of Singularity,” and is felt in the heart of every person. And there is not a person who can escape it, although each and every one takes his own share in that law: the great person according to his greatness, and the small person according to his smallness.

And although the attribute of singularity contains a sublime, beautiful and gracious meaning, since this attribute extends to us directly from the Creator, who is single in the world and the root of all creations, still when the sensation of singularity sits within our narrow egoism, its action becomes ruin and destruction and the source of all the suffering that was and will be in the world. And indeed there is not a single person in the world who is free from this attribute, and all the differences between people are only in the way it is used: whether for satisfying the passions of the heart, or for power, or for honor. This is what makes people different from one another.

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Two questions I received on the Messiah and the revival of the dead:

Question: Would you care to comment on this statement? “The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last day.” It is a quote from the writings of Franz Kafka.

My Answer: Kafka was a philosopher. His words once again prove it is impossible for the human mind and heart to understand nature, life and man. To do this, one needs to reveal the Creator.

Question: What is the revival of the dead and the coming of the Messiah according to Kabbalah?

You’ve said that the revival of the dead means that people will stop being egoists. Revival of the dead is described in the book of Yechezkel, and it is not the same as what you’ve said. Did you imply that during the revival of the dead the material world will unite with the spiritual world, and then people and souls will exist in one world? And if not, if everything is spiritual, then is the Messiah also spiritual rather than material?

My Answer: The Messiah isn’t a person, but a force that corrects us. After all, what can a person possibly do!? This force will correct the egoistic intentions accompanying all our desires, making them altruistic. Then we will all become equal to the Creator and attain the goal of creation – adhesion with Him.

To break it down even more: people will discover within them the force to correct their egoism. This force, which pulls them out of the egoistic perception of this world, is called the Messiah (which means “to extract, to pull out” in Hebrew). Instead of their egoism, they will acquire a perception of others, a connection with them through desires and sensations, and be one whole with them. As a result, they will acquire their souls.

The soul is a part of the Creator, the quality of love and bestowal. When all the people will do this, being that all people are interconnected, they will lose the perception of their differences – the perception of their physical bodies. Then, within their common perception, they will reveal the World of Infinity and adhesion with the Creator.

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A question I received: I don’t understand the views of this world according to Kabbalah. You say that Kabbalah is against asceticism, and you also said that a Kabbalist has the biggest ego and wants to swallow the entire world. But in the Talmud it says, “The way of the Torah is to eat bread with salt, drink water from a cup, sleep on the ground, lead a life of hardship and labour at learning Torah.”

I also read this quote in Attaining the Worlds Beyond: “When a person, by means of his studies, reaches the level at which he wants nothing but spiritual elevation and at which he accepts only the bare necessities of life in order to sustain his physical existence, not for pleasure’s sake, this is the first step of his ascent to the spiritual world“ (Talmud, Psachim).

So, I’m confused by all of this. How are we supposed to behave in this world? Can you give me a precise answer?

My Answer: Before falling from the spiritual level 2,000 years ago, people could sustain themselves on the spiritual level (in love and bestowal) through restrictions and studying Kabbalah (the authentic, inner Torah). This way they were able to oppose the egoism that constantly increased inside them.

However, after the people fell from the spiritual level of “love for thy neighbor” into “unfounded hatred,” the sages of the Talmud made a special correction (addition) in the Upper Governance, as Baal HaSulam writes in item 11 of the “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot“.

Since then, only the “Light of the Torah” (Ohr Makif) can bring about a correction. This Light descends on a person who has gone through the proper preparation (in the group), during the study of Kabbalah with the right intention. It is written: “I created egoism and I created the Torah for its correction, because its Light returns one to the Source (to bestowal).”

Hence, only the correct kind of study will evoke the Light, which will make all the corrections and changes. So organize your studies – and relax!

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Lesson on Baal HaSulam Article: “Preface to the Book of Zohar”
Shamati #6: “What Is Support in the Torah, in the Work”

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