Question: I understand how an infant develops. But who knows what genes exist in human society? No one has ever seen how it develops, nor was anyone able to collect data and assert how it will develop going forward. Humanity is our only child, and this is how it grows.

Answer: We can analyze and examine the past, study the developments in philosophy, sociology, and psychology, and this allows us to detect a consistent process and its driving causes. We don’t see future prospects very clearly, but judging by our present state we can still deduce where it will lead us. As with all things, we’re always extrapolating the past into the future.

Nature demands that we observe its laws. Nature is the general organism, which encompasses the still, vegetative, animate and human degrees of development. Everybody goes through this development. First it was the Earth, followed by the plant kingdom, followed by the animals, and finally humans.

This development began with the Big Bang and has been continuing via increasingly greater unification. In every instance, the unification of various parts leads to the creation of increasingly complex and unique organisms, both in terms of quantity and quality.

At first there was only inanimate matter, but then its parts suddenly began to grow acquiring a kind of life, their own individual development. The development then reached the animate degree at which animals develop even more individually. The animate degree was followed by man. These are the results of Nature’s development.

Obviously, this development has its own laws, which we can see by looking at the past. The question is whether we understand them? It appears that we don’t, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.

As a scientist, I study nature and the way it develops, developing me as its component thereby. Indeed, even with all our scientific achievements, man can never be above Nature.

We exist in a certain closed sphere that we call “the Universe,” we study where we are and the kind of laws that act here within this sphere. This sphere is infinite, boundless, and filled with unlimited wisdom. And all we’re doing is scraping up paltry crumbs from this wisdom: This is what our entire science is based on.

We don’t study anything other than nature, and within this sphere we also learn something about ourselves. We see that we cannot take control of our lives, and for this, clearly we must study the laws of nature. It’s good that unpleasant problems push us toward attaining Nature; at least, the motivation is to improve our lives.
[66061]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 1, 12/17/11

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The Book of Zohar, Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” Item 119: The lights of David’s Malchut depict the depiction to the degrees from Malchut’s Chazeh and below, where there is no face of a man. That is, the degrees from Chazeh and below rise and become included in David’s Malchut, which is the face of a man from Chazeh and above.

A depiction means a level of some degree. Depicting is like mating because in a Zivug, the degrees come out in the proper depiction according to the quality of that Zivug, to correct the depiction of all those who are included in the face of a man, in an inner depiction.

Within creation there are four types of desire: still, vegetative, animate, and human. They develop step by step because the Creator’s intention is to bring this creature through the still, vegetative, and animate levels to such a developmental degree that it desires to become human. After all, the creature doesn’t become human naturally, as Nature or the Creator would make it happen. No, the human depiction is revealed in this creature only as a result of preliminary understanding, comprehension, desire, efforts, and pleas—everything that stems from itself. That’s the only way it happens!

That is why this development is gradual. Little by little, over the course of tens of thousands of years’ worth of our development throughout history, on all our preceding and very distant degrees, we essentially “sow” within the inner qualities of perception, so that today in our generation, they would awaken and help us to realize our purpose. Indeed, at the human level we must resolve for ourselves the form and manner in which we must grow, why it must be this way and not that—to truly mold “from a piece of marble” something that didn’t exist before, something that has never been mentioned anywhere and lacks any kind of example.

I need to come to know the Creator, and then fashion out of myself, out of this “piece of marble,” the same form accordingly. And the Creator doesn’t reveal Himself in this process, for if He would reveal himself, I would only take from Him something superficial. Whereas I need to study Him, dig down to reveal the inner essence, from my very innermost desires and across the depths of all my degrees—still, vegetative, animate, and human. And then I am to decide whether or not to become similar to the Creator, for this is completely opposite to what I desire initially. Building a human is very hard and meticulous work that takes tremendous attention to every detail. This is precisely the work we study in the Book of Zohar, in the Chapter “Two Great Luminaries.”
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/8/12, The Zohar

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Question: It’s easy to imagine introducing integral education in America and other European countries where the country’s culture seems conducive to going through the process of self-knowledge; however, there are societies entrenched in ancient traditions where it appears the implementation of integral education will be difficult. In your opinion, what must happen in order for these people to start “gathering in a circle”?

Answer: Within the next 10-20 years I see such societies changing into something completely different.

Just look at what’s happening in India and China with their secluded way of life in villages far removed from all civilization. Just look at the way people are living: sleeping on a cot in a dormitory in a factory where at least 50,000 people work.

Everything has changed. Now these people are losing their jobs. Where will they go? A person loses his cot in a dorm and that is it, he has lost his corner and has no other place in the world. It is terrible what’s happening in these countries. China and India are enormous lands.

We must understand that changes can occur very sharply and suddenly. I see how fast the Gulf states are changing, the Arab Emirates for example. This is an educated country where the entire population lives at a comfortable level, but their way of life and their clan system is changing very quickly. All of a sudden they are losing the basis for it.

Closed societies still exist here and there; however, they are beginning to include themselves into the general masses that are living a more or less modern life.
From the Fundamentals of Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/11

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All corrections are done according to the principle of “from easiest to most difficult.” And this is logical: At first Light corrects the purer vessels, which are closer to it, and then with their help, it moves onto the coarser and more complicated vessels.

Every vessel has five categories, or ten Sefirot—the structure of HaVaYaH in other words. This structure divides into five parts according to the Aviut (coarseness) of the vessel: from part zero to part four.

The vessel is broken in a special way: The higher its parts, the lower they fell, while the lower ones, on the contrary, have suffered fewer changes. Now the reverse order of Lights and vessels determines the path of correction. Vessels are corrected by the Light, which returns to the Source or surrounding Light (Ohr Makif). It is activated according to the stable and invariable law of similarity of qualities.

Vessels are corrected one step at a time. The vessels, which awaken towards correction on their own—“light” vessels of bestowal—do not need any special system. They do not need any special instructions; they naturally are drawn towards unity on which the entire correction is built. These vessels of the zero and first degree of Aviut are called “forefathers.”

Vessels of the second and third degree of Aviut require a more methodic correction in the work of spiritual attainment. They are called “sons.”

And finally, the vessels of the fourth degree of Aviut, which cannot yet be corrected, are called “nations of the world.”

As Baal HaSulam writes, forefathers needed a “preliminary consent of the entire nation.” Their souls were neither coarse nor separated between them, and this is why it was enough for them to understand the need for unity without having to do difficult work on self-correction with Lights.

But sons are coarser vessels, which work with egoism. They received the method called the “Torah,” which allows them to correct themselves—at first in the vessels of bestowal (“forty years of wandering in the desert”), and then the vessels of reception the (“land of Israel”). Then, while they were mastering the “land of Israel,” they broke twice, as they fell from the degree of the first and the second Temple. In other words, they have created vessels with an altruistic intention, but they were not able to hold them.

Then the sons mixed with the nations of the world who did not participate in this process.

And today the time has come for a common correction. Accordingly, everyone who awakens towards ascent is called “Israel”—according to his aspiration towards the Creator (Yashar-El). In the past, forefathers referred to themselves as ‘Israel,” because they came out of Babylon and escaped to Land of Canaan—in other words they rose from the degree of egoism to the degree of bestowal. Then they fell into the state of Egypt and once again rose to bestowal, having passed Mount Sinai and having continued corrections in the desert and the Land of Israel.

However, after the final breaking, the notion of ‘Israel” disappeared, because no one had the intention for the sake of bestowal, except for separate Kabbalists who lived in every generation—the last islands in the ocean of egoism.

In our days, every person, who awakens towards correction, is called “Israel”—according to the desire, which the Creator has ignited in him, his future role. And the rest for now remain in the category of “nations of the world.” For now they neither want to nor are able to hear the message about unity. However, after thousands of years of mixing, everyone is basically capable of spiritual ascent.

Briefly speaking, this is what the process looks like. At first mankind was in the common state of “Babylon,” and then that state divided into two parts: “Israel” and “nations of the world.” Then Israel descended into Egypt from there, which means that it acquired the evil inclination, and four hundred years later it managed to ascend to the degree of the Torah, build a Temple on the level of its private end of correction.

Then a breaking took place, and the sons of Israel have fallen down, into a two thousand year exile at the end of which all of us will come to a common end of correction.

Our simple countdown begins at the point of the beginning of correction when the fallen qualities of Bina have combined and mixed with the qualities of Malchut: Whoever awakens is ready for the spiritual path. Correction happens according to the principle of “from light to heavy”—but not by the means of the Torah, which is the method of past generations, but with the help of the wisdom of Kabbalah, which is able to bring the Light to us, which returns to the Source (Ohr Makif), from the end of correction. This is why it is becoming revealed in our days.

[61444]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/22/11, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Question: When we look at our life, we see that we have no control over it. How should we relate to this reality?

Answer: Actually we do have control. It all depends on our approach.

In this world, I am in a kind of a “bubble.” I keep the laws in this world and try to fulfill my desires. Eventually I work out the relations with the world. I have studied it in depth, I have created many technologies, and I feel that everything is fine. Apparently I should be satisfied with the world because after ages of development, I control it.

Suddenly something new comes up: New forces arrive and I discover that I cannot succeed in anything. I have built many systems in this world: family, work, education, science, etc. Everything “ticked like clockwork,” everything seemed perfect, and suddenly it seems that everything has become bad.

What happened? It doesn’t make sense. We know so much; we have the brains; we have been through so much, so what’s the problem? Are we really so foolish that we don’t learn from past experience? Are we destroying our future? Why are we getting divorced without thinking about our kids? Why aren’t we aspiring to advance? Why are we ready to destroy everyone around us only so that our neighbors will be worse off than we are? What is going on?

It is simple. We are not to blame. Today another form of control is being revealed, a new sphere of another nature that controls us. If it weren’t for this new control, we could live a wonderful life. But it has been revealed, and now we have a problem. We are not opposite from the laws of this world but from the laws of the upper world. They influence us and we are miserable, unable to escape it.

In our world we always managed somehow and we aspired to advance, to know more, to understand more, to feel more, and to develop. Eventually we meant to subdue this whole world. But today we discover something that we don’t know and that we have no control over. Like kids, we face this uncertainty afraid to move so that things won’t get any worse. We see this in the world’s leaders and decision makers who don’t know what to do. For every problem there are endless opinions and no one has a solution.

The reason is that a new leadership has been revealed. How will we manage with it? How will we manage with its forces? We are perplexed and we feel bad.

This feeling doesn’t come from the Creator, but from our lack of adapting to the laws of the upper nature. Today we have to harmonize with them. We have grown for a long time and have finally reached the beginning of the Machsom (the barrier). The crisis is the beginning of the Machsom for the whole world.

In the group, we transcend it a bit sooner from our own will, aspiring forward. We have a “point in the heart” (•), we understand and feel that there is something else and we want to break into it.

The rest of the world is also facing the Machsom, but it will need our force and the troubles that push them from behind. One way or another, we have to discover the upper nature and to keep its laws, in other words, to be balanced with it. This is the safest thing.

Nature requires connection, integrality, and mutual unity of us. It is totally interconnected, and we have to be that way as well. We are on the way to unity and wholeness.

There is no punishment here, but rather new forces that push us towards wholeness. These forces operate in nature systematically, and we shouldn’t think that the Creator is trying to fail us on purpose. He hasn’t changed anything either in the past or today—there is simply a development engine constantly working inside us. Thanks to it we grow wiser every day.

However, if we don’t operate our brain and our wisdom properly, in order to adapt to nature, we will suffer. We had to unite with nature and lead a wonderful life, but now we feel this treasure as a problem. One way or another, this is our choice.
[64771]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/23/11, “The Peace”

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Baal HaSulam “The Peace”: Since Providence extends from the Creator, who undoubtedly has a purpose in His actions, since there is no act without a purpose, we find that anyone who breaks a law from the laws of nature that He has imprinted in us, corrupts the purposeful aim.

We exist in a global, integral world. There is no choice; we must implement all its laws. Once we kept them to a smaller extent since we had less desires, less contact with nature and the world. Today we are more involved with it, and that imposes greater obligations upon us.

When we don’t carry out all the laws of nature, we are incomplete and flawed. Thus our problems and sufferings will increase until they force us to obey them.

After all, we exist within nature. And from this comes the absolute need to execute its laws.

It is interesting that at the levels of still, vegetative, and animate all the laws of nature are executed naturally. There are no mistakes made. If there were a mistake, then it would be a sign that something was unwell. I once told a friend of mine, a veterinarian, about a cat who jumped unsuccessfully before my eyes, and got badly injured. He said that the cat was, without a doubt, ill. An animal doesn’t make mistakes since it obeys its instincts and its calculations are always correct because the laws of nature are at work and nothing more.

Man, on the contrary, can make mistakes in order to complete himself in awareness and recognition, until becoming similar to nature. And this also includes the small volume of our world’s nature, so that we will be able to advance forward and understand that it is not only this inner sphere that we need, but also we need completion until the level of the external sphere, the upper world where the laws of providence and management are.

We must carry them out and through them manage the whole of reality. When we include them within us, “we will pass to the side of the Creator,” and then we will manage the world with the attribute of bestowal.

“To know” these laws, is not simply to know of their existence without actively executing them. “Knowledge” in this case means adhesion, involving both the internal sense and reason, when you invert to be one with these laws and they operate in you exactly like in the animal world of the animate. This is called adhesion.

Thus, we need to unite with the entire world according to the law of love for others. The concept “others” includes the still, vegetative, and animate in nature, the levels that are found under man. After that, one needs to love the Creator. This means to merge into one with all of these laws, with all of these attributes. And then, there is no doubt there will be no error.

When you realize them as they are, in heart and soul, you reach Gmar Tikkun ( end of correction).

Thus, only for humans is there the ability to make mistakes and correct mistakes. Only in this way they develop. Through this, they complete their beastly existence via nature, or in other words, via the Creator, and acquire equivalence to Him.
[64781]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/23/11, “The Peace”

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Question: I know from experience that a person is prepared to study if you explain to him why that’s needed. So why does he need a course on the evolution of egoism?

Answer: From this course he will learn not only the beginning, but also the end of this whole chain. He will feel himself existing within it. He will see where all of this is headed. On the basis of that he could make correct decisions regarding all his personal states.

Comment: Let’s say I learn how the planets got formed. How is this related to my life?

Answer: It’s a part of an overall worldview that slightly raises a person above his animal part. When he turns to look back a few billion years, and when he looks forward to tens or maybe even hundreds of years ahead, he begins to see this practically endless axis of time within which he exists at this moment—a small, weak, and dependent element. And from here a question arises in him: “Who am I?”

When he sees his pitiful condition upon this axis, it will be possible to start raising him above it into a new state where he will feel: “All of this is below me, I can be in control of it all, I am actually on a higher level and can exit the boundaries of time, space, and history.” This is the beginning of that enlightenment that will appear within him.
[64704]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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Question: When you talk about the integral society, you always emphasize that a person rejects his own opinion for the sake of the common idea. Could you focus on this in 
more detail?

Answer: I will say a few words about this. You can say that this is a whole philosophical system.

First of all, a person must understand that he did not create himself. He was born this way. Nature created him the way he is. Partly, he received some qualities from his parents, partly from his environment in the process of growing up, and partly from who knows where, why, and how.

Everything there is in him is not his own, but has passed down to him from some internal genes, which have been realized by the uncountable generations of his ancestors. Specifically, in the creation of a person, the ancestral genes and stem cells of his parents are at work. As it is said in the Bible, “father and mother, and the Creator between them.” The three of them are at work in this process.

Afterwards, a person develops under the influence of the surrounding society, which instills its values onto him. Meaning, that in a person there is nothing of his own.

But where is his personal “I”? It is unclear at all as to what it is. Where does it come from inside of me? Even if we take a small baby, we see that it is simply an automatic machine, a small animal, where the personal “I” is gradually beginning to emerge from somewhere, something independent, structured, personal. However, we do not know what it is.

So then a person separates everything that is not his from this “I,” then he begins to actually feel that it is not a problem to separate from his qualities, which he received from the environment, from education, from his parents, or from who knows where, from the darkness of the centuries.

The most important thing is my “I.” If I only think about how to elevate and realize it, then I don’t care about all of the characteristics and qualities that exist inside of me. Meaning, that they are not mine. If a person positions himself correctly, then he understands that it is not difficult at all to rise above all of this.

It is these “I”s of ours that we have to unite with each other. But leave everything else—because these are only random parameters accompanying us.

Question: So it turns out that the development of this “I” is the objective of the integral education course?

Answer: From the whole of this superficial covering, shell, we must retrieve and develop this nucleus, the original stem cell of each one of us. It can only be developed by means of connecting all of the stem cells together. When we unite them together into one common organism, it will truly be equal and perfect, like nature itself.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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What does every person want at the end of the day? He wants to know exactly what influences him. Is it one force, or maybe there are two? Perhaps there are thousands of them on each side? “It doesn’t matter. The main thing is to remain connected with these forces and make them good to us. Then, we’ll be fine.”

This is what our egoism demands. As our ego evolved, our attitude to destiny also changed. People began to believe that their lives depended upon various outside factors. It’s on this basis that many creeds and religions were created.

Separation into “good and bad” is subjective. We “enter” an outside picture into ourselves and mark things with “pluses” and “minuses.” If we weren’t doing that, we would consider everything that happens to us “for the better.” However, we perceive any natural phenomena only through the prism of ourselves, and that’s why we’re unable to distinguish between them.

Thousands of details of positive and negative natures arise in our imagination. To the degree that our egoistic desires grow, we feel the need to detect the factors that influence each of its new aspects. We assign some upper divine meaning to them since we depend upon them for better or worse.

This is how our attitude is developed, through the change of our mind-set towards destiny and to who or what gives us birth and then sends us to death by taking us nobody knows where. Eventually, in our eyes all of nature splits into multiple detached elements and forces.

If we stop associating desires, feelings, and powers with these forces, we will see that we are simply talking about nature. In such a case, various factors are not dressed in human attire and do not have desires. They are just “blind nature,” nothing more than that. Nature stops being capricious by manifesting itself as “positive or negative,” but rather acts in accordance with rigid laws.

Because we haven’t learned the laws of nature and don’t have control of the general picture that is being drawn by them, we constantly deal with unexpected situations. The point is that we simply have no knowledge of the objective laws of nature, which don’t depend on anything except themselves.

The problem is that we don’t see the causes of events. Let’s say everything descends to us from the higher level that we are unaware of, whereas obvious things stem out of the laws of blind nature. However, a person is unable to exercise such an approach because he depends upon multiple factors that in his eyes are independent. So, he starts to associate them with caprices of nature.

A person doesn’t trace back his roots and doesn’t see the origin of his actions, judgments and sensations; he doesn’t even suspect that he operates according to a special program installed in him. He only views the observable part; that’s why he considers himself and others to be independent and arbitrary. As a result, he assigns the same concept to nature and starts to erroneously believe that it has a certain willpower of its own that can be altered depending on circumstances.

He trusts that he should treat nature positively, cajole it, pay it, and pay those who possibly are close to nature and can protect him. At this stage, a person stops depersonalizing nature, but rather ascribes his own desires, thoughts, and properties to it. This is the root of beliefs and religions.

Nowadays, we see that our egoistic desires, which have been growing for centuries, lead us through these theories and various attitudes to divinity. In the end, they all collapse. Some are inclined to fanatically hold on to a certain theory by artificially separating themselves from the rest of the world for the sake of alleged stability, even though it prevents them from further growth. This attitude can be traced in religious fanaticism and fascism, meaning in narrow-minded egoistic types of unity that at first bring steadiness to society, but in the end break down since they make further advancement impossible.

To the extent that people’s egoism grows, humans remain “naked” since they lose the opportunity to connect with nature. They feel that they are being captivated by absolute power that embraces all spheres of life, that they depend on chances and destiny, and that they simply cannot form any kind of subjective attitude towards these notions. This becomes a turning point that eventually will refer humanity to the wisdom of Kabbalah.
[63334]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/2011, “The Peace”

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A person doesn’t know the world he lives in. In fact, he belongs to nature that throws him from one state to another. During his short life of several decades he doesn’t have enough time to realize what is going on. Interestingly, about 150 years ago, man’s life expectancy was not 70, but 40 years.

Regardless of the near doubling of our life expectancy, we still do not comprehend the essence of life. Humanity still doesn’t know what to look for and where to find it. The meaning of life remains ambiguous. When does life begin, and where does it lead us? Is there a purpose to it? What’s going on with us? The answers are vague.

People are subject to the power of nature. No one gets a book with revelations from Above. We all disclose everything there is within our world. The revelations we make build our understanding and awareness of reality.

Except for the substance from which we are made and our five senses, a human being possesses an inherent ability to discover something bigger. However, it is all in potential, and in reality we build our attitude to life and nature based on what we see. This gave rise to simple theories of creation based on life in this world.

First, man perceived the world as nature. He observed nature as a whole, as a complete picture in which all parts are interconnected. Thus, he felt close to nature. It is an ancient approach that was completely clear since everything was apparent and disclosed.

Later, people began to sort natural phenomena into “good” and “bad.” Man became more egoistic, and stopped sensing himself as an integral part of nature. He figured out that nature had various limitations that seemed positive or negative. He sorted the elements that influenced him into “beneficial” and “harmful” and thus created a notion of good and evil forces.

At first, it was a general opposition of good and evil, which later started to split into numerous independent forces until assemblies and pantheons of deities were created. Thus, our ego distanced us from unified nature even more.
[63337]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/16/2011, “The Peace”

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