Question: It is said that my environment today is me tomorrow. Do you agree with this statement?

Answer: Of course. We see how the environment affects us.

Man is born an utterly small, helpless, wild animal. Gradually, under the influence of parents, and then of a wider circle, he goes through educational institutions, school, the street, neighborhood, and so on.

He watches a lot of programs on television, on the computer, and eventually becomes the way we see him in society. If he did not receive this influence from the environment, he would not be fit to live in our world at all.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 5/7/20

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Question: The basis of conformism, first of all, is that the opinion of others is very important to us even if we do not notice it or do not recognize it.

Why do we care so much about the opinions of other people whom we neglect, and in fact do not care about at all? How can you explain this paradox?

Answer: This is indeed a paradox. On the one hand, I am deeply indifferent to others. On the other hand, it is very important to me that they approve of me. If even a small mouse, cat, or dog shows some gesture of disdain for me, I will get upset. This will hurt me very much.

It is arranged so by nature so that we would get into correct contact with the world around us. So that we will have good mutual communication. So that I will correctly influence the world and the world will influence me in global harmony.

Question: In principle, if I didn’t care about society, I would never be able to establish proper communication with it?

Answer: You would not be able to change yourself and feel the globality and integrality of general nature. This is the most important thing.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

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Question: How will the current pandemic affect our development? Does it promote human freewill? We see that it, on the contrary, kind of takes away our freedom of choice because we behave in accordance with the external circumstances in which we exist. Where is freedom here?

Answer: Actually, we have not had any freedom of choice. We never have been guided by it; we acted only in the name of our egoism.

Taking into account all kinds of restrictions that the environment imposes on us, we have acted only under the influence of one single factor—our egoism—in order to fill and satisfy it every instant.

Comment: In the past, at least there was an illusion of freedom of choice.

My Response: You are right, the illusion has disappeared. But precisely due to the fact that it does not exist anymore, we have the opportunity to achieve real freedom of choice.

It is to rise above our egoism, which fetters us hand and foot and does not allow us to be free in any way. That is, freedom of choice is, first of all, freedom from one’s egoistic nature, which is imposed on us from above.

Question: Why is it written in many sources that freewill is in choosing the correct environment?

Answer: This is already a means. If I believe that I am obliged to get out of the power of egoism that dominates me, then I am looking for a means to achieve this. And it turns out that this can be done only by building an appropriate environment that would correctly influence me.

Question: In any egoistic society, receiving from it brings me pleasure, and giving back to society causes suffering. I do not want to give to it, or I do want to, but to the extent that I receive from it.

But suddenly values in society begin to change and they tell me that giving is good. And I begin to work, as it were, against my egoism. Is this the freedom of choice that you are talking about?

Answer: Freedom of choice is to expose oneself to the influence of the correct environment in which the property of bestowing is considered the highest and prevails over the property of receiving.

Then by including myself in this society, like a small child with closed eyes, surrendering to it, I can change these two levels in me so that the property of bestowal would be more important, better, and greater to me compared with the property of receiving.

Question: So, on one hand, I am going against my natural property to receive. On the other hand, society provides me with certain values that tell me that it is worth giving back to it. And this conflict evokes a certain spectrum of actions in me in which I am free?

Answer: Absolutely right.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

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Question: We can find many examples in the world today of people sacrificing themselves to save others. Doctors are saving patients by working around the clock, sometimes without any protection. Many celebrities are declaring to the whole world that they are ready to sacrifice themselves and their capital.

You also say that we need to change and sacrifice our egoism. Is this freewill?

Answer: No, it’s a little different. Although I welcome such motives, this is not the corrected state of humanity.

The point is that humanity needs to correct its attitude toward each other, its attitude to egoism and altruism, not in a limited capacity like in caring for the sick or something else.

There are people who, out of their selfishness, are ready to kill others so that they do not destroy, for example, green spaces or pollute the environment. We see these movements for green ecology and clean air are absolutely selfish. And so much so that people with ardent egoism are ready to harm the life of another person who, unlike them, has a different understanding of what is good.

Question: Do you think that helping in extreme situations such as a pandemic or economic crisis is natural and that this is not called correction?

Answer: Yes. We just need to realize how much our nature pushes us against each other and to correctly characterize human actions.

If it is difficult for me to look at a sick patient so I give money for his treatment, then in the end, I do not cure him but only alleviate my sorrow for him.

In Kabbalah, we are talking about a fundamental correction of our nature.

Question: That is, I should do good things not because I empathize with the sick, but beyond that. Even if I have nothing to do with them, I still have to do it for some higher purpose?

Answer: That’s exactly the reason.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

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Question: We can say that spiritual advancement pushed Mikhail Lomonosov, who was born into a poor fisherman’s family, to leave his native village and go on foot to Moscow. Let’s say that people do not have such an awakening, there is no such aspiration, but at the same time they can listen to us now. Where could they start? What can turn them on?

Answer: If they have such an information record that they should turn on, then they turn it on, and if not, then no. This is destiny.

Question: They say that 50 percent of your destiny can definitely be changed, and 50 percent of events you just need to accept. I am not suggesting that this is correct. But it turns out that everything that happens in life can be changed?

Answer: No. You can only be what you are as recorded informationally in your original state. It contains all the steps you must take on the way to your final absolute state. But you can speed up this path, make it more convenient, and most importantly, do it yourself. You can enjoy realizing it.

Such a realization of the path of life, when you make yourself a person of the future, is a great pleasure. It gives you fulfillment and creativity. But in general, you still keep going and translate into reality the informational record that was in you initially.
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From KabTV’s “Together about Important Things” 7/14/20

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Question: All people are conformists by nature. They are more willing to follow society than to show their independence.

Renowned psychologist of the 20th century Erich Fromm writes: “Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking—that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority.”

Why are we so easily influenced by society?

Answer: Because we are entirely a result of the surrounding society. Completely! And what can be one’s own in a person?

Remark: It may be an illusion, but everyone feels like an individual.

Comment: This is given to us by nature. And then what?

Remark: Ask any person and they will say, “I made the decision to go to this country. It was I who decided to acquire such and such a profession,” and so on.

Comment: Of course, he made the decision. And so everyone thinks. But where did this decision come from? What is it a consequence of?

If we dig, we will get to the bottom of the fact that a person has nothing of his own.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

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Question: To what extent and how will I become free from the chains of popular views and the impact of the external society if I study the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: I can tell you from my experience that you totally cease to feel the impact of the external society and that you perceive it as childish babble because you try to implement the upper spiritual principles of nature.

Remark: People will say that it is arrogance.

My Comment: Let them say so; it makes no difference. When I reveal the upper goal of nature and it illuminates for me, different popular views have no effect on me and I am simply above them. If you know that this is the truth, you regret that others are unaware of this truth, but you do not descend to the beastly level of existence because of it.

Question: Aren’t you sorry that a person does not understand the truth?

Answer: I would like to bring the truth to the whole world so that people will see and hear what the wisdom of Kabbalah says and so that everyone will open their eyes, and then once they see the truth about the whole system and how nature is managed, they will decide what to do independently. I would like that very much, but unfortunately an individual can attain it only by his own efforts.

Question: But as a result of his efforts, does a person still come to a free, conscious decision? I mean, doesn’t he simply force himself to choose the path to the truth but seemingly feels it?

Answer: Yes, no one can do it for him. As we say, “Freedom is a conscious necessity.”
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 11/17/19

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Question: Are ideas about good and evil, truth and honesty, love and hate formed by society?

Answer: These views are formed by the environment. But when they get into the soil, it all depends on what kind of soil the grains of the environment fell into.

A lot of other data is taken into account here. These are the properties of parents and even grandfathers, the properties of the family and modern society, as well as all of their interactions.

If I was born from certain parents and grew up in a certain environment, then it is necessary to take into account what kind of society I am raised in, Western, Eastern, religious, etc.; that is, there are a huge number of factors of personality formation that I receive without even realizing it. But all this affects me.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

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Question: We are influenced by a lot of data. First, the genes and properties inherent in us by nature do not change. Second, we are influenced by society.

Third, there is an external influence, such as a pandemic, an economic crisis, or some kind of natural disaster, which can affect the development of a particular inclination.

For example, if a person has a tendency to stinginess, but he lives in a country with a high standard of living, then this property is not manifested in him. But in an extreme situation, it can manifest itself. Do all these factors simultaneously affect a person?

Answer: No, that cannot be said. They are always in action, but each one to a different degree. It depends not only on the person, but on the society and the historical period in which he lives. This is a global, I would even say universal, program. Therefore, it is very difficult for us to say something definite here: what depends on what and when.

Question: Which of these factors has the greatest impact on human development?

Answer: It’s hard to say. It depends on the time and place.

Question: And yet, what influences more: genes or society?

Answer: Genes. Getting out of their power is very difficult. The fact is that a very diverse society can influence us in different ways. At the same time, there are so-called concrete forces of chance. It is very difficult to calculate and describe.

Baal HaSulam in his article “The Freedom” also describes this in rather general terms, because there are many factors that affect us.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

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Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”: It is worthwhile taking some time to grasp such an important thing, meaning how we exist in the world as beings with a “self,” where each of us regards himself as a unique entity, acting on its own, independent of external, alien, and unknown forces, and in what this being—the self—becomes revealed to us.

We need to make great efforts and spend a lot of time in order to understand where we live, what affects us, and what we can do with ourselves. First, we need to deal with this problem, and then how to solve it.

It is true that there is a general connection among all the elements of reality before us, which abides by the law of causality, by way of cause and effect, moving forward. And as the whole, so is each item for itself, meaning that each and every creature in the world from the four types—still, vegetative, animate, and speaking—abides by the law of causality by way of cause and effect.

We are in a system that develops according to the law of cause and effect, a clear and accurate law, just like all of nature’s laws. We need to learn and observe them, and try to see how to implement them in practice in order to resemble them.

By learning and exploring the laws of nature, we begin to understand that we are completely opposite from them. By revealing the laws of nature, we see that there is absolute interdependence of all the different components in the system. The levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature are absolutely tied to each other. Although it may seem to us that there is a struggle between them and mutual destruction, there is actually harmonious interdependence between them.

This is what we should speak about, discuss, and understand, but this is the situation. There is a precise clear integral connection between all the parts of nature. Only the human goes beyond this framework with his egoism.

The reason we are an exception to the integral nature is our ego. This is the reason we do whatever we like. We want to manage our lives by ourselves. How should we dim our “self” so that on our human level, we will also exist absolutely integrally like all of nature? This is the question that we need to ask and to scrutinize.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 11/17/19

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