In the News (postnauka.ru): “…The uniqueness of Maslow’s theory is that he treats each person in terms of a hierarchy (superordinate structures) of needs, the apex of which is the need for self-actualization. It defines self-actualization as a man’s desire for self-actualization, to actualize his potential. This desire to be what the person should be.

“Moreover, as noted by Maslow, self-actualization is not determined by social roles, status, position. For example, one person self-actualizing as the perfect parent, and the other as an athlete, and the third as an artist, and so on. Nevertheless, a significant role in the development of personality Maslow assigns social environment.

“The basis of the pyramid of needs are physiological needs: the need for food, sleep, etc. Above these is built the need for security, stability, freedom from fear, anxiety and chaos, a need for social structure and order. Above the need for security, Maslow puts the need for belonging and love, and above it – the need for respect and recognition. The top of the pyramid, as has been said, is the need for self-actualization.

“One of the most frequently asked questions: Why is it a pyramid? Maslow believed that only individuals reach the top of the pyramid and become self-actualized, i.e., reach their identity or self. Most people operate on the level of satisfying their physiological needs. Part of humanity meets the physiological needs and security needs, that is, feeling well-fed, clothed and sheltered, the other part, except those needs, meets the need for love and belonging. Then there is this group of people, which reaches the level of acceptance, confidence, a sense of the importance of private utility.”

My Comment: Baal HaSulam’s pyramid is a pyramid of corporeal desire— food, sex, family— bodily desires, and the needs for wealth, honor, knowledge—social desires—next, above these desires is the desire to attain the meaning of life, the source of life, that appears in a person from Above in the form of a Reshimo, an informational gene of his previous spiritual state. The Reshimo leads a person to a teacher, a Kabbalist, and under his guidance and instruction one discovers the 125 levels of the spiritual attainment, until he reaches the top of the ladder, the state of the complete correction of the ego and the resemblance to the upper force.
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(Continued from “Revolution of the 21^st Century: Rich Man, Poor Man”)

First of all, society should be viewed through the prism of its development “on the crest of” egoism, meaning the desire to enjoy, which is our nature. This desire is constantly growing, increasing in various forms and directions. As a consequence, the various historical stages alternate with each other, and we are witnessing their dynamics.

Once people were glad to be in slavery because it provided food and housing and they never dreamed of anything more. Later, slaves struggled with the once-coveted yoke, eager to become free people. Let it be more difficult, but the man could not remain in captivity. Thus, our desire to enjoy gradually undergoes internal transformations, changing the order of priorities.

In this way, freedom is not the final destination. Indeed, a person needs a job to support himself. And here he is again enslaved no longer as a slave but as a worker, not bound and free to move. Thus, by increasing both quantitatively and qualitatively, our egoism drives the changes in our lives.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 5/14/15

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The weekly chapter of the Torah “Bambidar” tells us how the Israeli army was built. We learn how they gathered around the Tabernacle and what was displayed on the flags of each camp, etc.

This speaks about the building of the general soul: about the forces, intentions, and attributes of which it is made. The structure of the general soul reminds us of the structure of an atom, where only those parts that can withstand the radiation of the nucleus, the radiation of bestowal, can be close to the nucleus. It is according to this principle that the camps gather and are classified.

It says that it is forbidden to come close to the Tabernacle since one can die (“the stranger that approaches will die”). This means that your vessels, your desires, may not be able to hold on, and so become egoistic, causing you to die spiritually.

Comment: But all of humanity accepts these words as rigid laws and a threat of physical death.

Answer: The laws of nature are indeed rigid because the system that governs the world is very tough and uncompromising, but everyone still follows the stream of goodness.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/31/14

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Question: In an atmosphere of complete disconnection and lack of understanding, how can we convey the law of love for others to people?

Answer: The same state of disconnection occurred at the time of receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. Before that, the people of Israel came out of Egypt, where Pharaoh, the evil that separates us, was revealed.

We found ourselves in terrible darkness, passing through the “49 Gates of Impurity.” That is why we were rewarded the revelation of the force of unity, the Light of the Torah.

It is said that the advantage of light is known from the darkness. So today, when no one considers others and everyone hates each other, the light of the Torah is revealed to us.

Question: Why is this light hidden from us?

Answer: The light is hidden because we do not use it. The evil force is revealed to us through our egoism and desires, and the force of good has no place to be revealed. Let’s begin to perform good actions, bringing the force of good from concealment, and we will suddenly find out that we have two forces: the plus and the minus, the good and evil.

We will be able to balance these two forces and live in a world where we will become the masters of everything we do. The world will be opened before us.

Question: What would you like to wish the people of Israel on the holiday of the giving of the Torah (Shavuot)?

Answer: I would like to wish that we all understand that we have been given the Torah. We need to recall every day that we were given the Torah and that we must receive it. It is the only thing that we lack. This is not about religious traditions but about the method of correction, which allows every person to correct himself and attain love for others.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 5/3/15

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Question: Why must we receive the Torah every year during the holiday of Shavuot if we already received it at Mt Sinai?

Answer: It isn’t a physical action and about being physically at the foot of Mt. Sinai. We are told that a person should see himself as if he is coming out of Egypt every day. He must hear the Ten Commandments every day as if he is receiving them over and over again. It is because our ego, our desire to receive, is renewed every day. In contrast to this, we continuously must awaken the desire to bestow, the power of love. This is the reason that the Torah is given to us on a daily basis.

Now, however, we are in exile, which means that we don’t feel the good force which is concealed from us. We only can reveal it through the wisdom of Kabbalah, which was also intentionally concealed until not too long ago.

Question: How is the Torah related to the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah is called the wisdom of truth, the wisdom of the Light, since it is actually through this wisdom that we can attain the force of goodness, the force of love and bestowal, and fulfill the mutual guarantee and unity between us. We have been trying to do that for decades in the state of Israel, but things are getting worse and worse. We already have reached a point in which the situation is unbearable.

The wisdom of Kabbalah, on the other hand, reveals to us the force of goodness, the force of love, that ties us together and allows us to use it. We begin to feel how we must balance evil wherever it is revealed by the force of goodness. Then, we have two forces by which we can advance in the right direction to unity and love, and can develop in a good and wonderful manner.
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From Israeli Radio Program 103FM, 5/17/15

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Opinion: (Dmitry Leikin): “Individualism prospers in the modern world. The idea of living for yourself is so strong that you have to explain the fact that you do something for others.

“The point is that every person has a certain amount of power (energy), which he can spend on different activities.

“At the same time he has certain personal needs that he can fulfill through different activities. The need for altruism stems from the fact that a person has more energy than he needs in order to care for his own personal needs.

“This means that if we look at a person’s personal needs we will discover that they aren’t so many: he actually needs food, clothing, a home and a little bit of entertainment. All the other needs are actually collective needs, which means that you do something egoistically not for yourself but for others.

“But a modern man is left with far more altruistic powers than his ancestors. This means that modern man needs altruism more than the generations that preceded him.

“This is expressed in the form of laziness, depression and loss of motivation. This means that modern man realizes that he doesn’t know what he should do after the quick satisfaction of his personal needs. Because he has been brought up to live only for himself, he doesn’t know how to keep himself busy and eventually doesn’t do anything and complains about his loss of motivation.

“If he begins to do something for others his motivation will reappear and will turn out to be infinite since he can do something for others infinitely. This means that he can totally invest his efforts in such actions, which is actually what a person needs in order to be happy -to invest all his energy in something.

“If we look at people who do great things, we will see that all these things are always aimed at great masses of people. These people never complain about lack of motivation, but they may complain that they life isn’t long enough to fulfill everything they plan to do.

“The only way to be happy and to have the motivation to do anything is to do something not only for yourself but also for others. The reason is that you can have great motivation and self-fulfillment only in doing things for others.”

My Comment: Then egoistic psychology (motivation) gradually switches into the wisdom of Kabbalah because the egoistic motivation of working for the sake of others also becomes empty and there is a growing need for new motivation, for the Creator, because the Creator is infinite. A person who performs such actions feels that these actions are eternal and that the filling is infinite.
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Opinion (Thorbjørn Jagland, Norwegian politician and Secretary General, Council of Europe): “We have observed a collapse of interest rates on the interbank lending market that has practically reached 0%. This indicates that the world is about to undergo a serious crisis in 2015, the kind we have never seen in the past.

“Today’s modern banking system is based on positive values of interest rates in the real credit market. What will happen if the banking services for storing money will no longer be profitable? What will happen to the pension funds and to our savings?

“We also see a crisis of trust in the political arena. The global balance of power is changing and no one makes any decisions by himself. We are witnessing the changing of the world from a unipolar one to a multipolar one. The leading political figures have undermined the mutual trust between them by their actions. Will the current political elite be able to overcome the crisis of 2015?”

My Comment: We will be able to overcome the lack of trust and the resultant crisis only by a method that raises us above the general human ego. We must first implement this method in Israel and thus set an example for the rest of the world (see “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”, item 71).
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Question: How can a person break away from the spiritual path if his point in the heart draws him to it?

Answer: The whole generation that came out of Egypt has to die, and only those who are born in the desert reach the land of Israel. They either all die or they are all born as new people when they reach the point of Bina.

Being born as a new people is exposing the points in the heart to the Light so that from it emerges a whole image of man that resembles the Creator. All the others will die, which means all the other attributes in a person. It is just as we see in our world when a thousand come into a room and only one comes out as a teacher.

Question: Now when we engage in dissemination we don’t wait for this point to be revealed in a person, but actually begin to awaken it in him. Is this somewhat aggressive manner justified in your opinion?

Answer: I don’t think that we are aggressive because our primary motive is not to impose our method on anyone, but to identify with his suffering, his deficiencies, and his unfulfilled dreams. We feel sorry and identify with him and begin to realize that the pain and deficiencies he feels are a result of his helplessness and hopelessness.

He doesn’t admit it, but we begin to confess: “There isn’t enough security in my environment. Look at what happens to me, my children, my grandchildren. What is happening with the weather.” He complains about power failures, water shortages, about the large utility bills he has to pay, etc. He doesn’t forget local politics, global politics, and everything that is on the news, even though it doesn’t concern him.

If we take all that into account, we get the feeling of uselessness, despair, emptiness, and lack of purpose that are subconsciously expressed as complaints about everything. It seems that if he accepts it, then everything will work out, but if he is given a goal and told that nothing comes to an end, that everything has a goal and that everything will be fine, this goal will cover all his complaints.

People don’t die of hunger, of course, but they lack the most basic things. We see that it is impossible to fix anything unless we correct ourselves and begin to connect and think about one another. After all, there is an excess of everything we need in the world, but at the same time, in some countries half of their population is starving and the only reason is that we are not connected.

We mustn’t calm ourselves and say that it will all this will be adjusted in some way. It cannot be! This is the reason that our contact with the world today has become so vital.

The main thing is that the crisis is now evident in every aspect of life. I see how deep it is and it is a very unpleasant feeling because if we look at things objectively, it is like an approaching tsunami that is threatening to wipe us all out. Therefore, it is either facing terrible afflictions that will force us all to correct ourselves or prevent these sufferings with our explanations that will cause people to start correcting themselves before the troubles arrive. Animals can feel an approaching tsunami and escape in advance, but our ego doesn’t let us feel an approaching disaster in advance and deceives us by whispering to us that everything is fine!

Animals cannot survive that way. We are in a worse situation because we are disconnected from nature. In order to merge with nature we have to be in the attribute of bestowal and balance our egoism through this attribute. Only then will we ascend to the level of Moses and will be able to speak with the Creator.

If we connect to nature, we will be able to correctly solve all our problems and advance to goodness. Otherwise our ego will keep on confusing us. We are destroying our life, and the situation is really becoming threatening. I am not trying to scare anyone; everyone already knows all this. People have simply gotten used to the idea that a war may break out and there will be problems, annihilation, and death. We have become apathetic: Let’s live peacefully today, and what comes tomorrow, it doesn’t matter. The world is in a state of absolute helplessness and people cannot do anything with their lives, with mankind, with everything that we have done and caused.

Never in human history were people reluctant to have children or to think and care about them, and never did children leave their parents and travel far away from them. But on the other hand, we also see the other extreme today when infantile grownups (30-40 year-olds) live with their parents and have no intention of having a family of their own.

We have reached the last phase of the development of egoism that is already in need of correction. Therefore, it is time that we tell the whole world that we have the two stone tablets with the Ten Commandments in our hands. Let’s lift the iron mask a bit and expose our bright faces to everyone.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 9/30/13

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The whole world is an egoistic state of matter. Everything that is in the still, vegetative, and animate levels exists only in order to preserve itself in the best way possible.

In human matter it is even more exaggerated since I want to sustain myself in the best possible way compared to the rest of the environment of the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels. I have to be in the most comfortable state so that the whole universe will engage in serving my ego. This is a person’s natural inclination. If we could only see how we restrain ourselves internally just because we don’t want to suffer. I ask myself why I should torture myself just because I am not Einstein or Picasso. I don’t want to feel sorry as if I am cutting a part of myself off, accepting that I will not be a Tolstoy or Shakespeare…

The ego has a defensive reaction for every desire that isn’t fulfilled, but wherever I can, I want to grab and subdue everything for my own sake. This is our nature; a person is ready to swallow the whole world.

We cannot change our nature by ourselves. It was created and is sustained in us and in the whole universe thanks to a force called the Light. This force is invisible and not felt in any way by our senses, as it constantly creates, develops, and sustains the ego.

But inside the ego, there is a separate point that doesn’t belong to it, a point that scrutinizes the egoism. The Light that operates on the ego also affects this point. It begins to develop and feel where it is; asking itself, “I’m in some kind of nature? Who am I? Where am I?”

If this point seriously develops in a person (in fact this point exists in everyone, in some more and some less), it begins to ask itself: “What do is this for, why and from where? Why was I created? Was I created in order to suffer? If so, then I curse you as the source that has condemned me to such an existence. If it is for another purpose then what is it exactly? I demand an explanation from You!”

When a person demands an explanation from the Light, the Creator, he comes in contact with Him through the point in the heart, because this point is man and everything else exists in the animate state.

What can actually interest me? It can either be my own nature and how I exist within it in maximum comfort for several years and make as little effort as possible and receive as much pleasure as possible. Or, I yearn for my root, for my source, asking: “Who are You, the one who created and manages me?” This is the highest form of yearning in the dipole of the ego and the point that can develop within it.

The moment the point in the heart begins to develop, it can immediately be given its non-egoistic method of development that is fulfilled only under the influence of the upper Light. If this is what I want it to come to me more often, to have greater influence over me, it is revealed to me in my logic, understanding, and feelings,  in its goals and plans for me because it is the source of power, information—everything.

This is actually what the point in the heart or the human being in me demands. Then I am given the Torah and I begin to work with it. Anyone in whom this inclination is invoked should value it and truly fear that it could disappear and that he will remain a lump of stone of the ego or the beast.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 9/30/14

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In everyday life we generally hide our egoism. If I depend on my enemy completely, my ego begins to disappear and hatred evaporates. There is nowhere to escape to and I start to look for how to love him and cause him to love me. The self-preservation instinct begins to work, and I cannot hate someone when my life, the most precious thing I have, depends upon him.

But in our case, we are not succeeding. The hatred is being revealed between us more and more and the separatist movements are taking over the world. The more that our world is discovered as whole and mutually connected, the stronger the opposite trend becomes.

Each one aspires to isolation and ultimately we will reach the same situation as in ancient times, where every city and area became a separate nation. The whole world will be divided into such kingdoms.

On the one hand, egoism is growing, feeling its limitations and areas of control with more precision. And in this way, it separates itself from the others. As a result of this, the world in which seven billion people are living will create 10,000 nations that cannot get along with one another.

Even solitary individuals are no longer able to get along with each other. There was a time when families would live in one room: parents, children, grandchildren. And today two people cannot live in peace in the same apartment. This is called hatred.

To the same degree that our interdependence is appearing, the desire to shatter this dependency, separate and move away from each other is appearing as isolationism and separation. These two tendencies will not disappear and will develop more and more within human society, and there is no way to resolve this! Both will grow to the skies and there will be no possibility of solving this conflict.

The art of connection is called the wisdom of Kabbalah. Ultimately the relationships between everyone—children, adults, in schools, at work, in international relations and within society—will reach such a state that we will not be ready to speak to one another and will need the wisdom of connection!

This wisdom will be required simply to be able to arrange normal relationships at work, in school, in the family and in all areas of our lives. People will need this wisdom because hatred, rejection, the inability to speak to one another or even look at others will reach such a threatening degree that we will not be able to bridge this gap.

It will not be possible to overcome the lack of desire to see and feel others. A person will search for isolation so that nobody will be near him, and he will not want to get close to anyone. But on the other hand, he will have to sit in class at school or university and be in connection with others.

Today, one person cannot do anything; even scientists carry out research in large groups. In addition, in our jobs everywhere, we need to connect in teams. But a person will lose the ability to cooperate even with one person who is like him as this hatred will grow to such a degree.

So the wisdom of connection will be very much in demand. The whole world is going to need it.

We need to understand that all of the spiritual worlds: the five worlds, Olam Ein Sof (world of Infinity), the entire ladder of levels, and the Partzufim are revealed in us through the unnatural connection between people. According to nature hatred and interdependence are revealed in us. But if we arrange for a connection between these polar opposites, the hatred and dependence, and communicate with others above our intellect, desire, and all calculations, we will discover new relationships and a new world.

Now we feel this world through our five senses, meaning the five kinds of egoistic connection between us. We see everything through our egoism, meaning that in every situation we search for the opportunity to be confident and enjoy. Thanks to the wisdom of connection, the wisdom of Kabbalah, we will reach new relationships above the egoistic relationships, which are relationships of “…you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (“Leviticus” 19:18), and within the connection between us we will begin to discover the five additional senses: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut.

Within these senses, we will discover phenomena called spiritual worlds, until attaining the complete connection called Olam Ein Sof. The spiritual world is revealed in the connection between us, in the levels of our relationships that go from total detachment to complete adhesion. This is the ladder of spiritual levels.

To the degree that I try to develop love above my egoism and hatred, I discover the levels of the spiritual worlds. So it isn’t necessary to search for the spiritual world in any other place, such as in books or mechanical actions with the hands and feet. Everything depends only on work in the heart and how much I can connect emotionally with others above the rejection and hatred without wanting to delete or annihilate it.

After all, everything is built precisely above the hatred, as it is written, “Love covereth all transgressions” (Proverbs 10:12). So with love built above the hatred, I will discover a new world called the world of men. After all, we are all within this world and will be connected as one and receive the form of Adam – man  (Domeh – similar to the Creator).
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From the preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/25/14

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