Question: If people agree that all problems are rooted in our egoism, why then can’t we simply agree to share everything with each other and decide that everything is collective?

Answer: If we declare everything ours and divide it between ourselves, it will not resolve anything. We won’t make the world better, but rather would go back to the “fair” socialistic distribution of goods. This cannot correct the world. This is because the entire world exists solely for us to reveal the Creator.

Without taking this into account, you cut yourself off the source that can change a person. Unless you study the wisdom of Kabbalah in even the smallest degree, you won’t have any power to change human nature. As a result, you will end up in an even greater crisis, if not today, then tomorrow.

We must inject everyone with a dose of authentic wisdom of Kabbalah so that he has the force that affects and transforms him. Otherwise, we will simply start playing a game of building some new society.

However, does the world exist solely for us to build a comfortable material life? We must explain to everybody that this isn’t the purpose for which the world was created. The program of creation is to bring each person, all of human society, to another level of existence: absolute, mutual bestowal in order to unveil the force of total bestowal among us. This force is regarded as the Creator, the Upper Nature.

However, in order to change our nature to the degree that we must achieve, we have to receive an infusion from that level so that the Light that Reforms will affect us. Otherwise, how can we jump onto this degree?

At present, I am standing on the lower level, between the first and the second one, and I see how the higher degree is growing before me like a wall. However, it isn’t a wall; it is merely an ascent to the next degree. It’s just that this step is so exalted that it looks like a wall to me.

How do I leap over it? Kabbalah tells me: “You can do it, just draw the force of the Light to you.” However, we can’t do it alone, not you nor he nor I. It’s only if we unify all together. One person will study more and another less. One part will be performing actions and the other intentions. Everyone will be doing just what suits him or her best.

Not all people are the same: One person doesn’t want to think so much and prefers to act; another solves everything solely in thought. However, when all of them unite as one, everything works out for the best. Both are necessary.

However, we have to explain all of this to a person. He needs to understand life and the world he lives in. How deeply it sinks in is up to him. It makes no difference that one person processes things mostly in the mind and another in his feelings. But everyone will have a connection with the Light.

Therefore, Baal HaSulam writes that everybody has to go back to school. The question is only who should be studying and for how long. After all, everybody studies somehow in order to survive, doesn’t he?

Today, you won’t find a farmer who has not studied somewhere. If you were told that tomorrow there will be a horrible storm and you should learn how to escape it, everyone would agree to study, wouldn’t they? Everyone is forced to learn from natural disasters that are taking place everywhere right now. We offer humanity a way to learn how to achieve happiness, which everybody will be happy to learn.
[31166]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/29/10, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: What solution can you offer a person who is a neutral observer? Wouldn’t it all seem to him as just a philosophy?

Answer: Kabbalah speaks of a force that exists in nature, and we can invite its positive influence upon us if we wish to become like it. We can’t change that force, but we need to put our house in order. It’s the same as with sunlight; I can stand in the shade, or I can climb onto the roof and bathe in the sun rays. The sun doesn’t change; it’s me who changes, wishing to get more of its light.

There’s the exact same force in nature, and the wisdom of Kabbalah can teach us to receive it. Kabbalah is a science. Be smart, learn to use the power of the Light, and it will develop you in a good and correct way.

We’re not talking about artificial things or fantasies, only about how we need to organize ourselves, the relationships between us, a shared “network” to “catch” the force existing in nature and to profit by it. Instead of turning your back or side to the “sunlight,” turn your face to it. In other words, reach equivalence of form with it.

That’s what the wisdom of Kabbalah is saying. It advises a person: You are forced to evolve whether you want to or not. However, if you want to develop in a good, enjoyable way, know the force that affects and develops you. If you turn your back to it, it develops you through suffering because you feel its effects as pushes from behind. If you stand “sideways” to it, it varies, sometimes better and sometimes worse. However, if you turn your face to it, you will develop in a kind and happy way.

That’s all we do. We just want to discover the positive influence of that force upon us. It influences and develops us in any case, even now. It’s an indisputable fact that our states change. Can we make life stand still? No, every moment we face a new situation, and that process doesn’t depend on us.

However, there’s a science that says: “Look at the existing trend. You don’t have to ‘reinvent the wheel.’ You see that we are all connected with each other, but our connection is not good. We are ruining nature more and more. So, let’s connect in the right way and invert the trend.”

If all of our problems are caused by the flawed connection between us, let’s think about how to connect properly. Kabbalah simply lays out clearly the natural law of similarity of attributes. “Creator” means Nature.
[31175]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/29/10, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: If the Light is the most absolute, total pleasure, then I want to get to know it better. How do I do that? It seems to have come to take me along, but I didn’t notice it….

Answer: You must decide whom you do choose: the Light or the pleasure it brings? If you choose the pleasure, it won’t work.

It’s only at the beginning that the Light raises you by way of pleasure, so you may grow up and be an adult. Likewise, we raise children in our life. Our children receive, taking everything for granted and keep growing until they reach a certain age, and then we tell them: “Hold it, from now on you are an adult.” He can scream that he wants to remain a child and keep getting candy; it won’t work. If you grew up, you have to do your duty in the army and work; you must act as an adult.

What does it mean to be mature? An adult can’t run after pleasure; he must go for bestowal! You live in the society and have to bestow to all others: go to work, contribute to society, and then you will have the right to exist.

It is exactly the same in the spiritual world. An adult doesn’t wish to simply enjoy; he strives to reach an exalted and great purpose in his life. To be mature means to be in bestowal, to work not for the sake of the pleasure but for its source.

This is the kind of loyalty that is expected of us. This is when we establish a connection with the Light itself, not just with what we receive from it.

Hence, we are presently entering a new era, when the Light is no longer giving us pleasure. It no longer promises us that there are nice things ahead, and we don’t run forth in anticipation of receiving some new pleasures any more. Nothing attractive lies ahead.

At this point, we don’t have a choice but to transition to a new paradigm: rather than chasing after pleasure, to go after its source. And if we don’t wish to do so, it will get worse. The Light will still force us to do it by cutting us off from the opportunity to enjoy anything. Then, we will start asking: “What is happening? What is my life for? Why is the pleasure gone? What do I do?”

You begin asking not about pleasure, but rather about its source: “Where did the pleasure go? What happened with its source? Where did it used to come from?” And so we advance.

For as long as we keep receiving pleasure, we don’t ask about it. But as soon as we don’t get it in the present and don’t expect it in the future, it becomes a problem. I start seeking where it was supposed to come from: “Why hasn’t it come? What happened there?”

And at this point, I begin to see that if I wish to reach pleasure, I have to get closer to its source. And to get to it means to replace my desires to receive with the desire to bestow.
[31298]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/30/10, “The Wisdom of Kabbalah and Philosophy”

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Question: Is it worthwhile to preach “material” altruism to the world as the first stage of correction?

Answer: In the circulation of the wisdom of Kabbalah, we cannot join efforts with “altruists.” In the best case scenario, charitable organizations give out to the poor what they have managed to get from some others: for instance, flour from one factory, textiles from another, shoes from yet another one. Obviously, it’s nice, although very few are doing this. Most of the time, it doesn’t go farther than talking.

However, what is important to understand here is that we are not improving the world by any of this. In fact, egoism that is destroying it doesn’t get corrected by such actions. By satisfying desires of an egoist, you are ruining him. His needs should be met on the condition that he acquires a profession and does something by using his hands or the brain.

A person has to work to produce something in exchange for the sustenance you supply him with. Otherwise, you are breeding parasites, and billions of people don’t wish to work but expect that you will feed them.

And later, they come out into the streets, complaining that you are reducing their welfare. And they are not the ones to blame since it is you who raised them that way; you developed such an attitude in them.

European leadership itself raised the protesters who are rioting against welfare reduction today. They were told clearly: “Do nothing, and we will pay you for it.” In other words, you yourself made a mistake and now you have to pay for it. Indeed, who will refuse charity that has become a norm?

Man shouldn’t be trained to receive things gratuitously. In doing so, we don’t take his egoistic nature into consideration.

The same goes for children. They have to be aware that you always give them something in exchange for what you receive from them. You constantly teach a child to treat life correctly and train him to work with his egoism. Nothing is gained without an effort.

Surely, children need a special approach, but it has to be based on the same laws. You give them a candy not because they are cute but after they have finished solving a math problem or doing an exercise. Otherwise, you are corrupting a child since now he is going to expect to get everything in life for free. As a result, he is going to grow up a miserable individual who doesn’t know how to live.

Payment is always necessary, among adults and among children. Besides, a person has to know who he is paying, with what, and what is expected of him. Only then will he build a correct attitude to the others surrounding him: He not only receives something from outside, but also gives something in return. Thereby, gradually, a person begins to interact with the entire creation correctly. Then, a completely new philosophy emerges and forms in him.
[30812]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Peace in the World”

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The world is full of problems, and try as we might to correct our situation from generation to generation, we do not succeed. The wisdom of Kabbalah explains why we are haunted by all these problems and misfortunes: They are pushing us to the correct development so we may rise above our egoism and transition to another dimension, that is, to the property of bestowal, a different force, another perception of the world, the kingdom of bestowal rather than the kingdom of egoism.

Therefore, the aim of our entire evolution is to reveal the suffering and worthlessness hidden in the egoistic desire. The more we attempt to use it, the greater disappointment it brings in order to show us that we cannot use it for pleasure and fulfillment since the receiving desire is unable to receive anything.

We don’t understand this and keep repeating our mistake, but we finally have to realize that it is impossible to fill the desire egoistically because it is against the law of existence of desire and the Light. Starting with the First Restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph) and on, I can never receive something into my egoistic desire and become filled; it can never occur in history or reality.

When we feel that we are fulfilled and are enjoying ourselves, it is due to fact that we are stretching the pleasure we felt from the moment we encountered it to the moment when it is gone. For those brief instants while it is in us and we can feel it, we will have to pay in full with the pain that comes as the newly formed emptiness unfolds within.

This emptiness is comprised of the force of pleasure and the time of its presence within the desire. For example, in our world, power equals tension multiplied by the force of an electrical current. The same occurs with enjoyment. I can receive 10 grams of pleasure and feel it for an hour. Then, 10 grams multiplied by 1 hour equals the power of enjoyment. I can feel 1 kilogram of pleasure, but only for 1 second, which will also determine the power of enjoyment.

Therefore, eventually, no matter how much pleasure we sometimes manage to experience, all of it will turn into the suffering of the empty desire. We won’t be able to become fulfilled in our egoistic desires since it is against the nature of creation and its purpose.
[30837]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Peace in the World”

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Today’s world is designed in a way that no country can lock itself in and close its borders. If I lock myself out, there will definitely be something wrong inside the country.

We won’t understand why. We will think that we have created a society that supplies itself with all the necessities, like a huge collective farm that provides meat, dairy, fish, and vegetables. We will think that we can have a natural economy independently from everyone else, but no country will be able to accomplish this.

It is not because the country is unable to provide itself with material products like water, electricity, and other natural resources. It’s because this is how it works in nature. All our cogwheels have locked themselves in with each other, and no one can break away from the others.

You will not comprehend why you keep having problems. One time, the cows will stop producing milk, another, the hay won’t grow, or the harvest will get lost. You won’t know where such misfortunes suddenly come from, but it won’t work because, internally, the cogwheels are linked so tightly that you must be connected with the whole world. Today, we will have to explain it to everyone!

However, the G8 or G20 won’t be able to help us unite. Even if everyone agrees to it and decides to lock their hands and hold on to each other, they will cause even greater destruction. They will hold each other’s hand one instant and start a war in the next. If it isn’t for the Creator, for a spiritual purpose, their unity will lead to a world war. It will be worse than when Russia wanted to unify people in this manner.

Therefore, beside the explanations that we are all connected by nature (but not by our own desire which opposes it), we also need to reveal how we can change our desire for unity so that we, by our own will, wish to spin together with all the cogwheels in the right direction. To do this, we need the Light that Reforms and unifies us. However, this is possible solely by studying the wisdom of Kabbalah.

First, we can prepare a person by familiarizing him with all the conditions that surround the final moment, when he only needs to be handed the key contained in the wisdom of Kabbalah. Gradually, he will begin to understand that there is a common, mandatory interconnection, and he will learn what our free will implies.

In this manner, we should narrow the circle down until he has left only one unsettled, central question. This is the time when we can give him the answer, and at this point, a person will accept it.

This is how wise we have to make our dissemination so we can approach people gradually, demonstrating to them that it has nothing to do with any stereotypes, mysticism, religion, or Judaism. This is a natural science about how a person can become a harmonious part of this world.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains to you the law of nature that governs the world and the inner law within a person. In other words, it explains who you are and how you fit in this world.

[30822]

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Peace in the World”

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Question: Every person wants to be unique and realize the unique root of his soul. That’s why he is frightened by the explanation that he is a mere cogwheel in the common mechanism. He is afraid to lose his individuality in the society.

Answer: But why should you get lost in the society? On the contrary, you can become a righteous one who is regarded as the “salt of the earth”: to bestow to all and pull the entire world forward. Who is stopping you? There is no restriction on bestowal. Please, do bestow!

You are complaining that you are prevented or not permitted to use all the others. Obviously, nobody wants to let you take advantage of them. On the other hand, if you become great not at reception, but at bestowal, nobody will stand in your way.

One can be unique in the positive sense of the word, in bestowal. Why, then, do you insist on being different in the negative form, in egoism? Everybody wants to be special, so, please, do let them. Realize yourself in spirituality.

A person may be frightened by the very look of the linked cogwheels. He imagines being a robot or a screw, but it is a fact of reality, a picture that does exist in Nature. In Nature, nothing can be bad or good; it is simply a fact.

You may agree or disagree with it; it won’t change reality. You will only evoke blows upon yourself if you don’t comply with it. You may claim that you disagree with the law of gravity and deny its existence. Go ahead; we will see later how you will be falling off the roof.

It’s the same case here. We don’t understand how strictly we are connected with each other and we are still trying to do as we please. Everybody is pulling the blanket over their eyes. Later, we witness how everybody suffers, time after time, for thousands of years.

Now, we are entering such a state where our ego has grown to its maximum in all our earthly desires and tied us all to one another all over the globe. Nonetheless, we still don’t wish to admit it and we keep trying to deceive and use each other. However, we don’t understand that by doing so, everyone brings the very same pain onto himself that he brings to others.

We don’t see it, but if it were clearly revealed to me and I got an immediate, reciprocal blow at the moment when I harm someone, I would act like an animal that doesn’t have free will. I would keep swinging between blows and pleasures, working like a machine, if the law of mutual connection affected me openly.

Therefore, this law is concealed in order to give me an opportunity to add to it by using my free will. The law does exist, albeit  hidden, and I can make up for concealment myself as if it were revealed. After all, I wish it to work this way: I want bestowal to be enormous and powerful and prevail over receiving. It may be a law written out in every book, but I wish it to become revealed in practice. This is where my free will lies.

I was given one white spot which means that the Creator is concealed. I can bring Him out of concealment and fill this white spot with His presence. It will be my own presence since I will be exactly like Him. I will come to the place where He is hiding and replace Him. It will be as if He and I are partners, and I pledge that I will do His work for Him where He is hidden.
[30828]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Peace in the World”

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Question: What do we need in order to explain to the world the cogwheel principle?

Answer: We all depend on each other one hundred percent. In different areas, it manifests in various degrees; however, any percentage except one hundred is a lie. Even if only one percent is visible, it means that the rest of the 99% are hidden inside.

One way or the other, our interdependence is absolute, even if it appears to the contrary. Wherever you look, we are linked with iron chains of mutual connection, and there is nowhere to run from it.

The more clearly it manifests, the louder humanity will cry. In truth, it means that you depend on your foes and rivals, on each and on all, and you don’t know what to do with it.

As in a family, a husband and wife discover hate between them and total dependence on each other. We are all inseparable; there is no place to go. Here is our small apartment, our children, our refrigerator, our assets. And on top of all this, we hate each other to death, and we even can’t die.

Such an unbearable predicament must be somehow softened, soothed. After all, this is what we call the birth of a new world, contractions before Messiah’s arrival.

We shouldn’t hope that, having realized what is happening, the world will know how to act. In the Writings of the Last Generation, Baal HaSulam writes that people will never understand it, and never will a foe agree with a foe. Hence, we see the importance of the circulation of Kabbalah and our unification as a model for all humanity.
[30806]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/26/10, “Peace in the World”

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Question: Has the world already entered the period of Egyptian plagues, or do they still lie ahead?

Answer: They lie ahead. And yet, we shouldn’t compare previous stages of development with those that await us. In truth, the material nature of our path gets gradually replaced by the spiritual one.

Try telling your ancestors who lived a few centuries ago that you have everything yet are not satisfied with life. To them, you live a fabulous life. In your home, there is a device in the wall that makes water run when you turn it on. You have a button that when pressed, makes the light shine brighter than day. And you have a screen that shows you a full view of the entire world.

People would simply not understand what you lack. And you, amidst all this abundance, don’t know what to do with yourself. The rich interior of your home and your world signifies how empty you are within.

Therefore, Egyptian plagues are not corporeal but internal troubles. Time after time, you discover the lack of inner fulfillment; each blow reaches deeper and deeper into a complex, multi-layered desire. However, these plagues take place very quickly, penetrating a person’s inner feelings. On the outside everything stays calm; one does not need to be ill or physically suffer.

Of course, if we don’t take advantage of the Light, the plagues will arrive in the form of corporeal misfortunes. The principle is simple: If we advance ourselves and the world in the spiritual direction, the plagues will be taking more of a spiritual form. If we fail and the world doesn’t choose spirituality, it will experience them in a material form.

In the Writings of The Last Generation, Baal HaSulam writes that there may even be world wars, followed by enormous suffering. But we must try to undergo these blows internally. The Torah and the method of Kabbalah provide man with an opportunity to make the entire analysis very quickly by completing it internally, without involving the corporeal world.
[30701]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/24/10, “Perfection in Life”

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Question: I haven’t realized all my material desires yet, but I have already come to Kabbalah. What does it mean?

Answer: It isn’t a problem, continue [with your studies]. As the Torah states, and as Baal HaSulam explains in the “Introduction to TES,” a person need not abstain. Our path is not the one of deprivation; we advance only by way of the Light that Reforms. By working in the group and arranging the intention correctly during the studies, we draw the Light, and it reforms us.

Our body has nothing to do with it; there is no need to torment and deprive it, or submit life to strict limitations. The wisdom of Kabbalah doesn’t demand of a person anything but to study with intention. Everything will work out, despite our evil, inclinations, lust, and irrelevant thoughts. Let the Light work it out and do your best not to stand in its way.

When we feel “smart,” we tend to act independently, inventing artificial restrictions, as if we know what is good or bad for spiritual attainment. It is a completely incorrect approach. If we give the mind absolute power, nothing will be achieved. In truth, your mind always derives from egoism, the corrupted desire. How can it unilaterally define the next step of its correction?

Hence, we only arrange correct conditions for the Light to work on us. This is what the method is all about. Nothing else is needed. Don’t interfere with the Light; on the contrary, assist it to the best of your ability to affect you.

Use anything that evokes the Light’s influence: the group, unification, gatherings of friends, dissemination, the studies, events, and meetings. After all, the Light pours only on the unity of souls from where it departed during the breaking and whereto it returns if the souls make an effort to reunite.

First and foremost, you should be doing inner work on the background of external actions, with all the fibers of your soul, and keep trying to unite with the friends, anticipating the Light that will come and unify us for certain. This is the source of correction.

In our world, there are no other means, neither inside nor outside of a person. Only this will allow you to reform yourself and the entire world that is sinking into a global crisis.

Today, everything we have achieved in thousands of years begins falling apart, demonstrating to us that the Kli (vessel) is an empty desire which we have to do something about. Nowadays, emptiness has become the common fate.

Therefore, we need to reveal the correct method which is based on unity. We need to find the place of the breaking and draw the Light that Reforms, that is, that unifies us and brings us back to the collective soul. Only the Upper Light that appears in our unity will endow us with the sensation of an authentic life.
[30710]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/24/10, “Perfection in Life”

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