Environmental Impact

Question: According to Kabbalah, heredity and the environment are factors that affect a person on an unconscious level.

With heredity, everything is clear. As for the environment, does the environment we exist in affect 100% of us? That is, is it impossible for us not to fall under its influence?

Answer: Even if we do not explicitly choose a specific environment, but are in some kind of contact with it, it still affects us more or less, explicitly or implicitly. Moreover, we ourselves do not even understand how we put ourselves under it. After all, I might not want to be in contact with it, but it still affects me greatly.

Here it is necessary to carry out very serious work and research so a person realizes that the most important thing for us is to understand our surroundings, what exactly affects him or her.

Sometimes the environment in which we exist might affect us even more than people; it urges us to some completely impractical actions, reactions, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully investigate the impact of the environment on a person in all its parameters: inanimate, vegetative, animal, and human.

Question: Does it mean that inanimate nature also affects people?

Answer: Of course. Does the weather not affect our mood and well-being? And the city and the house in which you live? I’m talking now not about people, but about everything else, in particular, about the inanimate level. This all affects us very much.

Put someone in another place, put a person in a forest or out in the countryside, and you will discern a completely different person insomuch as the factor of one’s surrounding nature is strong.

Remark: They say that if you are near a depressed person, then his or her depression can also be transmitted to you. And even more so if you are in a depressed society.

My Comment: Absolutely.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 2/4/19

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Four Factors Determine Our Choice

Remark: Looking at our life, we see that it’s not so often that we choose something in it. Maybe it seems to us that way, but even from recent studies on this topic it shows that birth, death, character traits, and even political views are determined by society or are genetically defined. It turns out that nature leaves us no choice.

The greatest Kabbalist of the 20th century, Baal HaSulam, wrote an article on this subject, “The Freedom,” where he describes four factors that influence our development and determine our choice. The first factor is called the “basis of a person” or his hereditary information.

My Comment: Indeed, there are informational records in each one of us. In Kabbalah they are called “Reshimot.”

Remark: Baal HaSulam says that ideas, thoughts, and opinions all lose their previous form and at birth go to people in the form of properties. We do not choose these. They are inherent to nature.

The second factor is more interesting: the unchanging properties, which is that each foundation contains properties that change and others remain unchanged.

My Comment: A person is born with certain traits, with a certain character. Within this framework, he can change something, but he can’t change the framework. We even see such inclinations in our own experience and in our lives that can’t be changed.

Remark: Baal HaSulam gives an example that wheat will always grow from wheat.

My Comment: Yes. Nothing else will work. Under the influence of the environment or some other influences we can change certain internal qualities of a grain, but nothing other than that. It depends on what environment the grain is placed in.

Question: This is the third factor when the properties set by nature can change under the influence of the environment.

For example, if a person who is stingy by nature is placed in a certain environment where there is wealth, then it is entirely possible that this property in him will change to the extreme opposite or will not develop at all.

The fourth factor that determines the developmental stages of creation is external influence: climate, global warming, crises, etc. Suppose if we live in a normal society and everything is fine, then it’s stable. And if the global crisis begins and problems arise, then, quite possibly, it will change.

How do these four factors affect a person?

Answer: Simultaneously and sometimes in incomprehensible combinations. We don’t clearly understand what is happening here.

All we need to clarify is how dependent we are on them, and in what state at every moment we can act upon them selectively, with a certain direction, for a specific purpose.

Of utmost importance is how we can identify what is desirable to receive from ourselves or from others. For example, receiving from children, from upbringing, and how to influence them each moment, at what level, etc.

Question: So is the environment the only factor that we can change?

Answer: Yes. However, this is not about the usual environment. First, we must set the ultimate goal, understanding what we want to get from our actions. Maybe we will invest a lot in education and in the end get nothing but a zero depending on what we concentrate on, what we want to change.

Here you need to understand where the border of our capabilities is, what we have the most optimal means for, and how we can approach a person so that he himself takes part in his changes. Everything here depends not only on us, but on the object itself and the environment.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 2/4/19

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Question: Do I understand correctly that in our world the most free are children before we start raising them? They do not care about how to dress or how to eat. Do I understand correctly that we need to take an example from them and study the highest of sciences, Kabbalah, and  love one another, dance, sing, and rejoice like children?

Answer: Children are absolutely dependent on their desires and intentions. And the freedom they feel is imaginary. In fact, they do not know that they are not free and that they blindly obey their desires and instincts.

As soon as you begin to limit them or say that they need to restrict themselves, immediately they strongly resist and cry. Children are not an example.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 11/17/19

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Question: If everything is predetermined, including the fact that by choosing we will suffer more or less, then why do we need Kabbalah?

Answer: Kabbalah is needed to raise us above our egoism to a state where we will not obey anyone or anything.

Egoism enslaves us, therefore, the science we study is called “the science of Kabbalah,” the science about the bondage of our egoism, and how rising from it gives us a sense of freedom.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 11/17/19

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Question: There are many personal growth techniques nowadays that say: “Take responsibility, set goals and act, strive, work!” A person on our path often faces the fact that the Creator inserts sticks in his wheels. How can one act properly in order to do what is necessary on the material level and not deviate from one’s spiritual path?

Answer: First of all, it is necessary to understand the Creator’s plan. The plan is to bring a person to an absolutely free state. So that no pressure from the Creator is directed against a person, only for a person. If a person perceives this correctly, then he finds the correct contact with the Creator.

Then you just need to implement this practice. You will gradually understand that exactly this practice makes you free, raising you above your egoism. It raises you to the quality of bestowal, and this quality makes you free.

It seems to us that the quality of bestowal, love, bestowal on one’s neighbor, and love for one’s neighbor somehow enslaves us, limits us, makes us think about others and work for others. No. This is actually not the case. In fact, meanwhile, we begin to receive the upper energy, the higher sensation, a way out of this world; therefore, it feels like freedom.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 11/17/19

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Question: What path does Kabbalah offer for managing one’s fate?

Answer: First of all, it is necessary to rise to the root of your soul, at least to the minimum degree, from which it is already possible to understand what is happening with you to some degree. In order to participate in the management, you need to climb at least three steps: Ibur (conception), Yenika (suckling) and Mochin (adulthood).

After climbing only one step, a student gets at least some idea of how the control signals descend to him and operate him. He starts to understand from where he receives knowledge, desires, and different opinions, where the decisions are being implemented, and he already receives their results.

Otherwise, it seems to him that everything happens in him. Due to the lack of understanding of where all the signals are born, he thinks that it is inside of him.
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From Kab TV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 10/27/19

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Question: If the point of freewill is in approaching the Creator, then how can I bring someone closer to the Creator because by doing this wouldn’t I deprive him of his choice?

Answer: No. Freewill is not in moving toward the Creator. To this, you are awakened from above.

Do you want to say that you, yourself choose this path? Why? Somebody somehow influenced you. From where? How? You yourself do not know and do not remember. This doesn’t matter. The fact is that today you feel that you want it. But it is not your choice.

Your choice is not in selecting the vector of direction of where to go but in displaying even greater strengthening of the goal at every stage of your path. When your arms weaken, your legs give way, when you fall and have to get up to go forward again, this is when your freewill is manifested.

The Creator organizes a descent for you; you must understand why He organized it for you, and thus implement it correctly and go forward.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 8/18/19

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Question: You have been on the path of correction for so many years. Can you say that you are a free person?

Answer: I don’t know if there is a free person in our world in the sense that you are asking the question. In fact, freedom as we understand it doesn’t exist. It is possible only when you know what the truth is and can act for the sake of it.

Question: To the degree that I become like the Creator, do I become free?

Answer: Without a doubt, because the influence of the Creator on us is the characteristic of bestowal. If you acquire it, then you understand the Creator and the Creator understands you. To this degree you become free from both your egoism and the influence of the environment.

Question: Does a degree of freedom exists as a state of freedom against the violence and coercion by the desires of another person or group of people?

Answer: No, we almost always are affected by other people. The whole question is which society I should situate myself in. If I put myself in a society that is advancing toward the right goal, submit to it, and obey it, then this is how I attain that goal. That is how we must realize our freedom.

Question: What is the difference between freedom of choice and freewill?

Answer: Freewill consists of choosing how to behave. Freedom of choice is the choice itself.

Question: From the point of view of Kabbalah, how accurate is Hegel’s postulate that “freedom is a conscious necessity”?

Answer: This is purely a small materialistic misconception.

Question: Are all the thoughts, desires and actions I perform generated by the Creator?

Answer: Right now, yes,  but when you begin to acquire a Masach (Screen), then the Creator will not do what He wants within you; instead, you will do what you want with the Creator.

Question: Everyone has his own personality. What is it?

Answer: The personality doesn’t bother us. All the same, you are carrying out your egoistic demands. So it doesn’t matter what your personality is. One person loves to eat, the second one likes to dance, a third wants to sleep. What difference does that make? In every case you are carrying out your desires.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/12/19

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Question: How much of reality is predetermined? What is within our freewill?

Answer: Absolutely everything is within our freewill and absolutely everything is predetermined. That is, the program is initially given from the simplest, elementary partition to the increasingly complex. This comes from the basic law of nature. The speed of connection depends on us.

We should not get into the correction. It is not our business. I must make an effort to connect wherever possible, but in no case should I give orders and determine in advance what the degrees of connection should be like. Just push forward.

I should welcome whatever will be shown to me as a corrected state.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 2/12/19

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Question: There is such a concept, being a “slave of the Creator.” But the quality of the Creator is a quality of bestowal and love. If you are in it, is it a free state or not?

Answer: Free, of course.

Question: Why then is it called “slave”?

Answer: Because you chose this state for yourself. You, yourself have chosen it.
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From Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 5/12/19

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