If there were no spark of bestowal inside the desire to enjoy, it would not develop. How did a human being evolve from an ape? An ape operates purely by instinct, and a huge question arises: How in the process of evolution, from what type and kind, and in what way did a human suddenly appear? How could he develop from an animal?

His desire to know the upper force, his Creator, raises a human above the animal. It is explained by the presence of the spiritual spark developing inside a human being. This spark can be of four types, four levels, and that it is why there are different kinds of people more or less close to spiritual work.

If the spiritual spark begins to speak inside of my desire to enjoy, I already have two qualities—one against the other. I can compare them and decide what to do: to work for the sake of my egoism or for the sake of the spark of bestowal.

The spark of bestowal can bring my desire to enjoy a great gain. If we had been guided only by the desire to enjoy, we would have remained animals that do not evolve. But if we have the spark carrying the force of bestowal, we begin to use it to our advantage. Thus humanity developed.

In the beginning, a man used to bring his prey to his cave only for his family. But then he saw that it was too much, and his family could not eat everything. Then he gave a half to his neighbor and exchanged it for something useful. The egoistic desire was constantly growing, and he did not want to just share with everyone; thus, began mutually beneficial exchange.

The desire to enjoy was growing, the desire to bestow was increasing at the same time, and a human was getting smarter. He invented trade and markets, which exists to this day. Only it stimulated all our development, as it is said: “Go and earn money from each other.”

But this was not the main gain, it was the qualities that we learned from each other in the course of this trade. Thus, the desire to enjoy was growing due to the presence of the desire to bestow in it.
[75193]
From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/11/12, “The Gate of Intentions”

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Question: Most of us have relatives and friends who are dear to us who have not yet manifested an interest in spirituality. We care about them a lot and intend to rid them of suffering; is it worth waking up their points in the hearts?

Answer: That’s true, each of us has many relatives and friends to whom we would love to explain what we are preoccupied with. Possibly, it would help them too. At least, it could brighten up their lives interesting and think differently about their troubles and problems. However, we all know that it is a very difficult task, as a rule, to explain such things to those people who do not comprehend them. Why is this so?

Our methodology applies only to those who have awakened the aspiration to the goal of creation, those with the so-called “point in the heart.” Everybody has it. Modern day Kabbalists came from the first Kabbalist: Adam. Before Adam was born, for thousands of years, numerous generations possessed a latent point in the heart. Adam was the first man in this world whose point in the heart was awakened. It goes on from then. Before, each generation had very few people whose points in the heart were not dormant.

When a person’s soul (inner desire) matures (ripens), he starts to explore “Why do I need this life? What for? Maybe I should do away with all this? Or finally to find what makes life worth living?”

Such questions arise in everybody, but to different extents. Each person (especially in childhood) asks him or herself: “Why do people live?” Later in life, everyday routine suppresses this quest and people forget about it.

Nowadays, we see that due to crises and various problems, the question of the meaning of life spreads to millions of people around the world. However, people still restrict their search by questioning: “How can I get rid of the pain?” How do I get away from pain, not how do I move ahead.

Nevertheless, at this time we see millions of people who have a point in the heart. Look how many fellow students you have around the world and how many people we don’t even know but who study together with us. They don’t have an obvious desire to contact us as of yet, that’s why our task is to treat them with a lot of thoughtfulness, to never push them too much, and to find suitable reading materials for them.

I think that spreading of our methodology together with the materials we create for the 99% of the world population will gradually lead people ahead and will help many of them (millions!) to reveal their points in the heart. Others will simply follow; they will advance mainly because they tend to escape from pain somehow.

I am sure that you should search for interesting materials and give them to your friends. If you see that words do not work, then don’t talk. Printed materials are more persuasive. Try them. Be patient! Personally, I don’t know how to address those people who do not look for answers to these questions. Why do we need to force them? You have to tell people something that they are willing to hear.
[74101]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 1

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For thousands of years, our development continues on the inanimate, vegetative, and animate stages, which are not simple at all since they are based on the shattering of the first spiritual entity (Man), meaning the split souls. Since the moment they were shattered, each broken element includes all others in it. Each particle acquired a chance to live: to receive and to bestow, to consume and to discharge.

All forms of existence emerged from two forces, receiving and giving. The desire for pleasure in its pure form cannot subsist on its own. It needs some force that acts against it, meaning that it requires the desire to bestow.

This is how matter (desire) develops until it reaches a human (speaking) phase, which in its turn also starts to progress. The human level of advancement needs special “treatment” in that it requires a higher intensity of spiritual power. That’s why a specific group of people called “Israel” transpired; the direct translation of the word “Israel” is “Yashar-El,” “straight to the Creator.”

After exiting Babylon, this group of people descended to Egypt in order to absorb additional, powerful desires while still being in a state of immense aspiration; it was called the “Egyptian exile.” After getting an additional portion of the desire to receive, this group was granted a chance to work with it in order to transform it into the desire for bestowal.

At that time, the world’s nations used to be at an average level from which this particular group of people fell to the degree of “minus four hundred (400) years, which stands for “Egyptian exile.” It dropped 400 steps in accordance with the full circle of development, four phases of the Direct Light.

While in Egypt, the group acquired additional desire, and along with the additional desire, the group exited Egypt, received the Torah, and rose to the level of the First Temple. However, it ws destroyed and fell; the Second Temple was constructed, but it again was destroyed. As a result, the group descended to the depth of the last (current) exile where we are all at this time.

The degree of the fall that happened during Egyptian slavery equals the level at the time when the Temples existed. All of the above happened to make us drop from our prior height and reach the final shattering (exile) that continues to this date. The downfall we are currently in is so deep that we simply cannot fall any lower. From here, we can rise together with other nations and complete our correction.

Each spiritual action triggers material consequences in this world. Thus, we are obligated to continue working in this material realm during the whole period of exile. Exile means separation from spirituality and the inability to produce any spiritual actions. However, since we act materialistically and pursue egoistic desires through our bodies rather than souls, we still fulfill preparatory work that is associated with the period of exile.

The last exile is coming to an end and we all have to transition to freedom. The difference between exile (Galut) and deliverance (Geula) is only in one letter “Aleph,” which stands for “revelation of the Creator.” This means that we have to attain the upper world to reach the state at which the Creator fills the whole universe.

The reality we live in today will stay intact. All we will do is add the upper Light, the power of bestowal, to our prior sensations and thoughts. They will fill the whole world in which we will discover the upper reality since we will obtain different corrected properties.

At that point, we will understand the essence of the preparatory work that we did previously by fulfilling material commandments since we were incapable of doing anything else while we were still in exile. Thus, after we manage to return to the physical land of Israel, our present day task is to rise to the spiritual land (desire) of Israel.

It is said: “Each action leaves a mark.” This applies even to material actions since we build spiritual acts on top of them. Prior generations were supposed to fulfill material work in this world, whereas our duty is to pursue spiritual activities. That is why we concentrate only on spiritual work: human intentions and desires, attitude to concealment and revelation, and the property of bestowal that we’re about to acquire.
[74092]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/30/12, The Zohar

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Question: You have said that a person is like a cancer cell in the body of nature. How long ago did this occur?

Answer: Our egoism develops gradually and we’ve undergone a few stages of its development. Starting from the 5th century BCE until the 5th century CE, humanity developed in its aspiration toward wealth. From the 5th to the 15th century humanity developed in its aspiration toward power. From the 15th to the end of the 20th century development was in the aspiration toward knowledge. These are the prevailing tendencies.

In the beginning of the 20th century, an academic named Vernadsky defined our development as ending and leading to a noosphere or balance with nature. Later this idea was embraced by many other scientists. This research was continued by the well-known Club of Rome with other branches of researchers appearing later.

Essentially, egoism ended its development in the 1960s during the birth of a new culture among the youth characterized by detachment from life in what is called the “Beatles generation,” hippies, flower children and so on. This was the beginning of an inner skepticism, which meant that the new generation didn’t wish to nor did it find it necessary to constantly strive forward due to the fact that it felt empty.

We are constantly developing under the influence of our desires. After all, a person is a desire. We don’t know what to do when our desires for wealth, fame, or knowledge run out and we suddenly feel that we no longer receive the needed fulfillment from them.

This is when general depression appears. This is what we now see in our society: growing rate of suicides, families falling apart, detached attitudes of children, and so on. This is a transition period, which should be relatively quick. We are in the midst of a serious developmental acceleration.
[74307]
From a Lecture at Šiauliai University, Lithuania, 3/22/12

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Transitions to new developmental levels have always been induced by small crises: Education, social, financial, and other systems gradually started to go out of order. Marriages started to fall apart, slowly but steadily illicit drug use spread and overpowered alcoholism. All of a sudden terrorism came into view.

Humanity’s nervousness reveals itself. It’s a result of weaknesses in all spheres of life, which were built according to egoistic rules that made everybody concentrate solely on themselves: This is yours, this is mine, don’t cross the line! Everyone defends his or her freedom and personal space. Now, Nature destroys boundaries between us, breaks walls, and drags us into some kind of community life that we try to avoid because we’re not yet ready for it.

When our egos were still too small, we were open to everything. At that time, we didn’t care whether we lived as one family in one village. People didn’t lock their doors and were very friendly with each other. A huge family (parents, children, and grandchildren) shared one room and were not at all embarrassed with each other.

Nowadays, thing are different. We are separated by our huge egoism: Everybody wants a separate room, strives to hide behind the computer or telephone, and tends to contact others as little as possible. People don’t unite into families any longer, but rather get together to have sex and then go away.

But suddenly, Nature starts to destroy partitions and by doing so cancels our severance. The current crisis is the biggest of all we’ve experienced so far. We do everything to delay, to misrepresent it, but it manifests on lower levels at which we all are still interconnected.

Currently, there is no such thing as a family crisis since families are simply broken. More than half of families cannot be considered families per se and have no desire to revive and reconstruct themselves. The number of people who don’t wish to marry has reached 70%! Today, it’s normal, a  good family where its members treat each other with love and respect has become an anachronism.

The second major problem is drugs. We comply with this ugly phenomenon; our fight with it is mild and gentle. We realize that it’s a terrible thing which we can’t avoid because the society we live in and this life itself force us to look for ways to escape.

The next problem is how we raise our youth. Currently, demographics are poor, the population doesn’t grow much, and people don’t know how to take care of their children. Parents agree to leave children both overnight and during the day. Children are not attached to their parents any longer; the gap between generations grows. We are about to lose the next generation, but nobody worries too much about it. We say: “What difference does it make whether our children’s upbringing is good or bad; what does it change?” This is how we think, not even remotely realizing the essence of the problem.

It looks like all prior crises were not too big of a blow for us, nor did they trigger our understanding that we have bankrupted ourselves in all aspects of our lives. The developmental process always flows from the small and weak to impacting the big ones. This is similar to the punishment of children, meaning at first we start convincing them and then progress to threatening with bigger trouble. At this point, we all are going through a very serious process; it’s a matter of life and death.

We are going through two serious cycles of discrepancies between us and Nature. Integrality allows us to realize that we are opposite to Nature and contrary to all its systems, meaning that originally we were supposed to be completely interconnected, but we do everything we can to avoid staying united.

We understand that staying together would be good for us, but we don’t know how to achieve this state. Everybody in the world realizes that if people unite for educational, technical, pedagogical and cultural purposes, it will facilitate the whole situation. But how can we act against our ego? We are not capable of doing so!

Here is the problem: If we are unable to unite, we will stay hungry. Very simple! We won’t be able to provide for basic necessities: food, safety, heat, dwelling, and physical health. These are five basic needs that have to be satisfied in order to survive.

At this time, Nature is pressing upon us so much that if we don’t correspond to its requirements, we won’t be able to provide for our five major necessities. Such a notion as ecology is part of our requirement for safety. We will fail to provide food and keep good ecology; both are intertwined since one influences the other.

Worry, fear, and trouble will eventually force humankind to take drastic measures. If we don’t do anything, our resistance and opposition to Nature will lead us to affliction, wars, devastation, and obliteration. At some point, we will re-evaluate our chances to survive and will arrive at the conclusion that we have to unite and reach the fourth level of development—the Human level.
[72681]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11

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The fact is that by constantly developing, the ego was pushing us forward. We always wanted something new and were always chasing something. But today the ego has become flat; it has reached its maximum and, most importantly, become global. It has retired into its own shell.

As a result, we have become closed between ourselves and totally dependent on one another. We have created a closed analog system between us in which everyone is so dependent on others that through a chain of four acquaintances each of us is connected to all the people in the world. What’s more, today there is no need to fight: It’s enough to cut off a certain country from the mutual cooperation with other countries, and it will immediately collapse because it cannot exist on its own.

This was never the case before. A country could isolate itself and be independent. It could survive on its own. It had enough resources to produce energy, food, and everything the population needed, and there were no special problems.

But today we cannot do anything if we are not connected to tens of other countries. We have to buy, sell, and exchange goods, to constantly receive, send, and so on. We’ve become global, we’ve become closed. It wouldn’t be a problem if at the same time we were changing ourselves.

So, we have remained the same individualistic egoists while the world has become global and closed. Hence the discrepancy between the two systems.

On one hand, there is a discrete system, in which each of us wants to live alone: “I don’t need a family. I don’t need children. I don’t need anyone. I want to be independent and not depend on anyone.” This is how our ego speaks today. On the other hand, nature shows us the opposite: You are totally dependent on everyone. You cannot exist by yourself. You must be connected to everyone, and not only you, but your society, your state, and the whole world.”

This is the contradiction between the two systems: the general system we are in and our personal, individual, internal, system. This is the crisis since the two systems cannot work together. And this is what we feel.

So how can this problem be solved?
[73547] 
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson  

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In a way, we have always known what to do and where to go. Nature has always pushed us from behind: We wanted to evolve, to do more and to expand, to develop science and technology—everything we could.

Today we don’t want anything. We got stuck, turned silent. Our ego, which throughout history was humanity’s driving force, has ceased to work. It doesn’t evoke any urges or impulses in us, it doesn’t push us forward. We’ve been through many changes in society, we’ve developed, built, created, and made revolutions. Humanity has constantly tried to do something, to move forward. We were searching.

Today there is no search. There is no paradigm of thinking, no accurate, clear plan of what we want and in which direction to develop. This is what characterizes our times.

The main problem is that it applies to everyone. There was never something like this in history. All the countries and continents: Oceania, Asia, North and South America, Europe, the Far East, Japan, China, and Africa, all have all developed in their own way, at their own pace and were not dependent on one another.

Suddenly we’ve become so dependent that this problem has become global. We find ourselves in a world where everything is mutually connected. We don’t want it, but the mutual connection is so strong that it manifests daily and affects virtually each of us. If something happens somewhere in the world, it is surely and immediately reflected on us. We see what is happening in the stock markets in New York, Tokyo, Germany, or Frankfurt, what is happening with the oil or metals.… If there is an earthquake, a hurricane, or a volcano that erupts somewhere, it is reflected on everyone. We are in such a changing world that we cannot even imagine what to do next.

If we draw a simple graph of the development of the ego on a time axis, we will see that we used to develop more or less evenly. Only in the 20th century has our ego grown very sharply. We have made a breakthrough in every aspect of life: in technology, education, and upbringing, in developing the lands and conquering space. Suddenly we find ourselves on a “landing.” We’ve achieved the maximum of our ego, and it doesn’t push us anywhere anymore. We’ve reached this state since the end of the last century.

This is a very serious problem, which great men and great minds are dealing with. But today we are starting to research and understand it, and are beginning to realize what has happened.
[73550] 
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson 

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Question: The course of evolution of human egoism can be studied through the example of the four phases of the development of nature. Should we study other subjects in this evolutional context?

Answer: No, from the point of view of the development of egoism, evolution and history are historical forms that gradually accumulate and change thanks to egoism, and do so suddenly, by a leap. Any kind of social activity, interrelationships, engineering, or technology is replaced within a few years or decades by another kind since one obliges the other.

Social relationships change, and thus the post, telegraph, telephone, notaries, parliamentary interaction, and so on emerge. That is, everything changes on the entire level, on the entire dimension of human interrelationships.

We are not simply studying history, but social, political, economic, public, and technological development, as well as instruments of work and production, and agriculture. It is because agriculture determines migration, which determines demography, which determines something else. All in all, everything is so interconnected!

Also linked to this are the glacial age, the minor glacial age, the period of vegetation, and so on. We connect ecology with it, including the climate. We see that all of this is one, whole system.

Question: Why do we need to feel these phases?

Answer: If one does not know what happened yesterday, tomorrow he cannot think correctly. One must see the entire huge system that has always been moving and has brought us to our state today. Although it continues to move our still, vegetative, and animate states, it leaves to us the fourth level of development as free will, because we must complete it ourselves.

It turns out that one can make some approximations already and see that we will be moving forward. However, if one does not add his personal participation by exercising his free will, interacting with others correctly, and voluntary restructuring himself and society in advance, before receiving blows from behind, then his still, vegetative, and animate components push him forward harshly and summon corresponding actions within him. These may be terrible diseases, earthquakes, upheavals of revolution, and so on.

We do not have a clear view of this process as the necessary empirical material has not yet accumulated. However, we can make an approximation as to what kinds of blows we will be experiencing that will push us from behind, “toward happiness by the stick,” so to speak, if we do not forestall it through our unification, with mutual participation and aspiration toward harmony and unity.

This is why it is very important to study the past.
[72860]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” #12, 12/16/11

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A group should set a good example for everyone. It is playing what we would like to be, like a child who plays being a grown-up because he dreams of being a grown-up.

In our everyday life, when we advance instinctively by evolution, nature forces us to advance by pushing us from behind by sufferings and by luring us forward with pleasures, by showing us examples from the environment, by evoking our pride, by evoking our passion, our desire to control and other pleasures, making us yearn to grow and achieve more.

This is how nature advances on the levels of the inanimate, the vegetative, and the animate, but man who is the most developed creature on earth advances more than all the other levels. It isn’t enough for him to be born and to acquire the form of a grown-up in a couple of weeks like a beast does. He has to take on a new form in every generation. Nature takes care of that and advances him.

But when he has to grow, as a human being, in a form that is already different from the levels of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate, everything becomes different. We don’t see this difference, because we relate to the human body as to a beastly body; we pay attention to the friend’s face, to the way he behaves in the corporeal world, and to his character. We don’t understand that his spiritual component is totally detached from the body and doesn’t belong to it.

We need this body in order to attain spirituality with it, to attain attributes through it that enable us to connect with the friends internally. But actually, the spiritual form is totally different from the corporeal form, like two different levels. Just as in our world there is an absolute difference between an inanimate stone, the vegetative, and the animate, the human level is also cut by a border called the Machsom, which separates us from the animate level. We can rise to the human level only by urges that we design ourselves. These urges are called: the importance of the spiritual goal, which is the opposite from our corporeal level.

This oppositeness actually exists between all the levels of the inanimate, vegetative and animate. We must understand that in the process of evolution it is impossible to remain in the present state. So you begin to consolidate your powers in order to exit your current state and to move on to the next state, which is more advanced.

The same thing happens in our development. Nature brings us to this point when we feel the need for spiritual development. When we feel the point in the heart inside us, we come to the group. But afterwards we have to find the powers for our development by ourselves.
[70085]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What is the fifth or zero stage of the evolutionary development?

Answer: We see that all the laws of nature originate from a single law of the closed system, and so we assume that the zero stage of the evolutionary development is what existed before the Big Bang or during the Big Bang as the Thought of Creation.

Question: That is, everything that happens with us is a certain program that is being realized now?

Answer: If studying the environment and ourselves, we discover relationships, logic, and certain laws, it suggests that we exist within a system of laws, interactions. And if we do not or cannot see some of them, or see but cannot connect them together, this is our problem.

But every day, we discover more encompassing, richer, and interconnected dependencies.
[72795] 
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11   

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