Question: We are at the threshold of a new state. Will the transition to it happen smoothly or will it be accompanied by shocks?

Answer: This is something I cannot foresee because it depends on our free choice. Things can develop in either direction. If we advance correctly, then we will move toward the positive by being attracted to goodness. Otherwise, nature will push us from behind with disasters, which may include a world war.

Let us hope that we will choose the good path. And for that to happen, we have to do “our homework” the best we can. Besides the study, we also have to give what we received by working on dissemination and explaining what is happening to people. We have to create content and place it everywhere, including internet and mass media.

Every person studying the science of Kabbalah has to think about how to pass it on. We have to understand how horrible it would be to have this opportunity but not to realize it.
[54543]
From the New York lecture #1, 9/11/11

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It is extraordinarily difficult for us to change the ideas we have formed over the course of our entire lives until now. In fact, it’s simply impossible. One way or another, we remain with our old perception, even though it seems as if we are already changing. In fact, nothing is moving. However, now we have to change our old perspective to a new one, and this change has to happen in the whole world. So where can we get this new perception, an integral view?

Suppose that tomorrow the whole world wanted to turn into an integrally connected network where every person devotes his full energy to work for the sake of society (even though today no one wants this and no one feels this way, but let’s be dreamers for a moment). How will we find out how to build this system, how we should be connected and interact with one another?

How can we build such a government and society, production and trade, since all of this must exist as long as we live in the material bodies? Therefore, we are obligated to organize the entire system of relationships that ensures our life on earth in order to satisfy the needs of our animate bodies.

To do this we need many systems, but how can be build them by the laws of bestowal where every person is free and freely acts to maximally bestow to others, where every person knows what he should be doing in this ideally organized machine, in which all the cogwheels are spinning in harmony? This seems like a utopia, so how is it possible to actually make this transition?

It’s possible to write a novel about this, but how can we rationally envision an economic system that is necessary in such a society, the government and judicial structure, this entire mechanism, from the large elements to the tiniest bolts, including the supply of goods, care for the elderly, families, children, construction, and culture? The organization of all of this is very complex because everything has to operate in “perpetual motion” without the fuel that we are used to!

Everything has to work upon a different source of energy—love for the neighbor. But where will it come from? If I simply receive it from above, the way I now feel love for my own children, then I will be working automatically again, like a machine. So what’s the difference? Instead of egoistic love, I will be driven by love for the neighbor, so what will change?

Therefore, we have to build one thing upon the other so it would work upon resistance, ascent, the sensation of ourselves between two worlds or two desires where every person constantly rises above his egoism, which pulls him back toward the earth.
[53827]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/6/11, “The Nation”

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Today it is difficult to tell what the role of different countries will be in the new global world. Everything depends on how Israel will operate in the spiritual realm and which way it will tip the scale – what kind of balance will America, Russia, and the Arab world settle into.

Europe is losing its influence. The main forces remaining on the world map are the Arab world, America, and Russia. China will not manage to come out of its concealment, its place at the far end of the world. The crisis will not give them enough time to develop. They will soon begin to feel that the world does not need what they produce. That’s because the world will only need the bare necessities, but China does not produce objects that are vitally necessary.

However, right now it’s impossible to predict anything with precision because everything depends on our freedom of choice. If we act properly and well, then these forces will settle down into a balance. Then Americans won’t be using the Arab countries to cope with everyone else and to rule over the world, which is what they aspire to do today.

That is why Israel became an obstacle for them, which they wish to remove in order to then move in the direction of Russia and China. And to accomplish that they want to use the force of the most extreme Arab fundamentalism by allying with it, together with all of its terrorist branches.

This phenomenon is already well-known and has been described in many sources. I do not say a word of my own opinion here. Therefore, we have to understand that all of the good changes that can be made in the world can only happen above nature – only with the help of the method of correction! There are no chances here to achieve anything by force, especially in a country like Israel. By the recent disorder we see how the American program is being realized.

All of these demonstrations and demands are part of big politics, whose objective is to level this entire area and establish the power of Arab fundamentalism here. Americans expect this to become a powerful weapon in their hands, and this tendency or program has existed for a long time now and is gradually being realized.

America perceives Islam as an external force that enables it to control the world. But this is all arranged for Israel from Above in order to push us toward a spiritual solution. However, Russia and China have to feel that they are our allies in this situation because they are also in danger. We are just a “small obstacle” on America’s path, whereas they are the real goal.

This is the balance of forces that Americans want to establish in the world. And indeed, what other force is available today that can be manipulated and used for fighting, that has oil backing it as well as the pressurizing force of fundamentalism? Europe has gotten old completely, and Russia has also grown very weak and has gotten old over the years. It does not have the energy it once did, which is obvious even by the dynamics of the national gross product.

China also lacks real power because it is occupied with producing “toys.” This activity does not provide it with a powerful influence. It is a center of great financial and human resources, but this country has not built itself yet. And its psychology is to stay on the sidelines, as it did for millennia. And even though the Chinese have now dispersed all over the world, this still isn’t an “incursion” because their inner psychology has not changed, and it stops them.

All of this is finely calculated, and it is arranged from Above. Everything unravels by a strict program, which you can read about in the Prophets, which describe what will happen to the world in the end of days. And Israel is precisely at the very tip of the scale’s indicator, determining the direction and the steps that the world will take.

This tendency is very precise and it is already clear to many. I am not revealing anything new here. In the end, we will gain greater awareness of a simple fact: That we have nothing to rely on besides the upper force. But that doesn’t mean simply screaming “Save me!” into the sky, but rather, we have to make real actions and attract this force to us. Just as America attracts foreign forces to itself and operates through them, so we attract the upper force and operate with its help. I think that the success of the good forces is guaranteed to us. We only have to keep working and do what is necessary.

All other attempts and big plans are worthless. Only by acting correctly will we muffle all of this evil so it will choke by itself.
[53721]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/5/11, “The Nation”

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Question: When there are many people sitting in a hot room, there will always be one person who is cold and who forces everyone else to turn off the AC. Say most of humanity is able to adapt to the impending changes. But what should we do about those who are stuck and are not ready to leave the current state?

Answer: It’s important to correct yourself rather than the world. True, I want to elicit external movements and I try to help people understand the process and method of self-correction. However, in essence, I only care about how to correct myself. I do not correct my neighbor. I give him the method in the gentlest form possible, but I do not make him act; this is already his choice.

Therefore, we do not bother people who aren’t ready for change in any way, shape, or form. They aren’t ripe for it yet. When disseminating the Kabbalisic method, we let every person assess it for himself. I have already stated on numerous occasions that I don’t care how people accept our message. I listen to their responses only to improve the presentation: to state something in a new way and to answer a question that bothers someone. But if I have given all I have and a person still rejects and scorns my words, then I treat him with respect. To me this is also a sign of success because I was able to approach him and reveal his resistance. This is the correct reaction for him today, and nothing can be done about that.

We turn to the outside world only in order to improve ourselves. And if we improve ourselves to the best of our ability, then I don’t have any complaints about people’s responses. Let’s wait another year, or five more years.

However, if we go too far, this will be coercion and we won’t be leaving a person with the opportunity of free choice.
[52963]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/29/11, “The Nation”

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“The experiment was conducted by a team of researchers led by Psychology professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four students were selected out of 75 to play the prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building.”… 12 students we asked to play the prisoners, 12 students were to play the guards.

“The participants adapted to their roles well beyond what even Zimbardo himself expected, leading the “officers” to display authoritarian measures and ultimately to subject some of the prisoners to torture. In turn, many of the prisoners developed passive attitudes and accepted physical abuse, and, at the request of the guards, readily inflicted punishment on other prisoners who attempted to stop it.

The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his capacity as “Prison Superintendent,” lost sight of his role as psychologist and permitted the abuse to continue as though it were a real prison. Five of the prisoners were upset enough by the process to quit the experiment early, and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days… instead of the originally scheduled fourteen.”

Conclusion: Most of the evil in the world happens not due to bad motivation, but because one is told: “Be part of our team, do as everyone else does.” Then, a person feels that he himself is not responsible, but this is his role, he was told so, and so he lets himself do things that he would have never done under normal circumstances.

Two months after the experiment, one of the guards said that he really could never believe that he was capable of such behavior. He was shocked that he became such a person, and when he was doing that, he felt neither remorse nor guilt. Only later, when he started thinking about that, he realized that it was some part of him that he had never noticed before.

Even when one detainee was given a chance to get out of prison and explained that the experiment was over, he was so deeply immersed in his role that he could not accept that. He worried more about his reputation in the prison, wanting to return and prove to other prisoners that he was not a traitor.

My Comment: As the science of Kabbalah explains, the environment defines and molds a person, and apart from the environment, there is no other force that affects us and determines what we are and what we become. Therefore, it is very important to create a suitable environment, in accordance with the purpose that you wish to achieve. And this is the core principle of Kabbalistic education: to be in the group that studies the laws of nature (the Creator) and wishes to achieve balance and unity with it (the Creator).
[51105]

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A physiology experiment and its results:
Objective: “Does a belief in free will have a relationship with morals? Does the belief in free will make one more moral or less moral?”

Experiment: “A set of 30 people were taken and divided into two groups of 15 people each. One group was given passages and statements which seemed to state that free will does not exist. They were made to read the viewpoints of philosophers and scientists who were determinists and stated that free will is only an illusion. One of the passages they read was from Francis Crick’s book (Crick along with Watson discovered the structure of DNA), The Astonishing Hypothesis: ‘You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons.’

“So, one group was given ‘anti-free-will’ passages to read. The other group was given neutral passages to read that said nothing about free will or the lack of it.”

Test: “Then, the two groups were given a set of mathematical questions to solve on a computer. The computer program that asked the questions had a bug that the students could use to cheat in the test. After the test was over the experimenters checked the results of which group cheated more. The subjects of the experiment thought that the experiment was about math skills, but actually the experiment was about who cheats more.”

Result: “The experimenters found that the group that was given ‘anti-free-will’ passages to read cheated much more as compared to the group that read no passages related to free will.”

Conclusion: “So, the study suggested that a belief in free will makes one more moral. The person who believes in free will tends to take responsibility for his actions. A non-believer in free will tends to assign the moral responsibility to determinism – it had to happen that way!

“So scientists think that we may not have free will, but a belief in free will keeps society more moral. Our deterministic brain neurons fire based on its previous state, but one of the components of the state is our belief system. And having belief in free will in the system causes the neurons to fire more ‘morally’ than when the brain does not have this belief.”

My Comment: Kabbalah takes all of the opposite points of view and combines them, saying that a human being has no freedom in any regard; he is completely influenced by the environment. However, he can choose the environment on his own and thus change himself under its influence. This way, he can change his own destiny. (See Baal HaSulam’s article “The Freedom.”)
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In order to reach balance with nature’s integrality, we have to start treating each other differently in all areas of our activity. Even if the change is slight, even if it’s 1%, yet if it happens all over the world, it will bring about radical, enormous changes for the better.

In general, we underestimate small things. For example, over the last 50 years the world’s temperature increased by 0.1%, and look at what kind of changes this caused: the glaciers in Alaska and other places are melting, the ocean level has risen by several centimeters, and the climate is changing. And all this was caused by a mere change of 0.1% because it is happening in the whole world.

In the same way, the tiny change in every individual will be multiplied by seven billion souls which are absolutely interconnected with each other, a circumstance that was not present before. There is already universal closeness among us in some regard, and therefore this tiny movement will cause tremendous changes, transforming the world in an extraordinary way.

The current processes are happening on a very large scale. Therefore, this small change will bring about many consequences in our lives. Under conditions of mutual influence, every person influences everyone because we are all connected within a single net with our thoughts, desires, plans, and so on. Scientists are already talking about this as well. As a result, our thoughts and desires are coming closer and becoming inter-included in one another.

This is creating a completely different territory and platform for humanity’s existence. Through that, we, people, multiply our changes due to every person’s influence on everyone. A small change in each person is multiplied by seven billion, while seven interconnected billion people influence every individual that much stronger. A special progression gets created, like a snowball that keeps getting bigger. It’s as if you activate an engine whose rotation increases by virtue of multiplication, by virtue of our interconnection.

People are at the highest level of nature. The force of thought and desire that is inherent to us exceeds all other factors. The most concealed force is always the greatest. The force of the human level lies above the forces of the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature. Therefore, with our changes, we influence everything that surrounds us. And the results are not confined to the human society. By changing, we bring all of the forces in the world into balance.

Then the weather will normalize, all sorts of natural occurrences will calm down, and problems like the energy deficit and the dwindling natural resources will be resolved. In every area where we experience trouble today, we will experience changes and will attain success because we thereby create balance in the whole natural system, which constitutes one whole.

Therefore, we don’t just want to make our lives a little bit easier. If you observe the law of nature on your level, then, being a person, a creature that rises above all the other levels of nature, you exert an influence on them. As Baal HaSulam writes, all of nature rises and descends together with man. It does not have the freedom of choice to advance toward balance. Only man, who evoked the imbalance, is able to bring it to balance, to unity. All of nature adjusts to man from below, being a system that merely accompanies our human system.
[51141]
From a conversation about a new book on 7/11/11

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Question: What do you think about the current events and the current tendency, and in particular, how do you feel about the events that have unraveled over the last couple of days in England and Chile?

Unfortunately, the whole world will soon be enveloped in a fire of chaos because there is no remedy for what’s happening, and no one will find it either. Why don’t you wait it out until people see that nothing helps, and will then agree to listen to you?

Many years ago, during his post as Great Britain’s PM, the historian Gordon Brown along with many other influential individuals said that the world is one. They understood that only the unification of all people will give this world the solution to all of its questions and crises. Why, then, didn’t they resolve these questions through unification, by introducing a new kind of upbringing and promulgating the mutual guarantee, as you are doing?

Answer: Throughout all of history, humanity was nudged forward by the egoism that developed individually within every one of us. We aspired to realize and fill it. Our entire existence amounted to this. But in our time nature is not guiding us to develop our egoism further because it has developed to the maximum and has been showing us its emptiness for 50 years now.

Our egoism has become interlinked and that is why we are revealing that we are interconnected. This is what we call “the global world.” In reality, it’s not the world, but us who have become global. And therefore, as scientists ascertain, we should not develop egoistically, but globally, meaning we should correct the connections between us.

That is where all of the world’s scientists came to a halt because no one in the world knows how to do that. And the more disorder surfaces in the world, the more it will signify that the world needs correction more urgently.

Once the world became integral and interconnected, it started being governed by two forces: not just the force of egoism, which pushes us from behind systematically, by nature’s program, the way it did throughout all of its history; but also by the force of attraction toward the goal – to our unified state. However, we have to compel this force to influence us similar to how a child would remain an animal if he did not aspire to become an adult.

The method of Kabbalah is intended to evoke upon us the influence of the force that aspires “forward,” toward unity. Otherwise we will be pressured only by the negative force “from behind,” which will continuously evoke greater global suffering, down to wars. That is why Kabbalah is being revealed precisely at this time. All Kabbalists wrote about this. For example, see Baal HaSulam’s articles “The Revelation of Godliness,” “Mutual Guarantee,” and “Peace in the World.”

Besides, we have to understand that the more suffering is expressed in the world under the influence of the negative force that pushes us forward, the more it indicates that the world needs a force pulling it forward so our movement forward, toward unification will not occur as a result of suffering that chases us on, but by the good path, the good force that sweeps us forward.

Because the nation of Israel was created based on the method of uniting people, according to the principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” therefore, even after falling from this moral level it retained an “altruistic gene” that can evoke a force that accelerates progress and sweeps people forward, toward unity. But if Israel does not evoke this force and the world moves toward its goal pressured by suffering, then the nations of the world are right to assert that the nation of Israel is the source of all of the suffering in the world.

Although this nation did not choose to be the conductor of the method of correction, it is unable to free itself from this mission. The suffering of the nations of the world will evoke such great pressure from their end and such fury at the nation of Israel that this will obligate Israel to become the leader in the world’s correction.
[51163]

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In the past egoism spurred us on from behind and from the sides, always leaving the path forward free. However, today the barriers are not arising along the sides, but in front of us. It’s as if a wall rises up before us, leaving us no place to run, nothing we can do.

This state is becoming more and more apparent: I don’t really want anything, I don’t feel that I can keep growing in my egoism. It is incapable of giving me answers to the questions that arise in me today. I have outgrown the previous phases and have entered the next level of questions, the level of adulthood and new necessities.

Food, sex, family—all of these are falling apart, taking on strange, “mutated” forms. Wealth, fame, and knowledge don’t seem to promise me a lot either.

Science is in a crisis and does not answer my questions, even though a mere 50-60 years ago it still seemed like it would give us answers to everything.

Power has become petty in our eyes: We see that its only objective is money. And money…. Is it really worth wasting your entire life on!? My questions have already outgrown any number of zeros that a bank account can display.

When a person loses the necessary “fuel,” emptiness emerges inside of him and he finds himself asking, “What is worth living for? For myself? But I lack fulfillment. For my children? But when they get older, they will leave the nest. And besides, why raise them at all? What bright future do they have ahead? Disintegrating families and a decomposing society?” A person does not feel attached to anything and does not have hopes for anything. That is the kind of impasse that our questions have led us to.

But there is also a completely different reason for the dead-end state: We are exhausting the natural resources. Today it is already clear that human progress won’t be infinite, both from the point of view of our demands and from the point of view of our existence as a whole. If we continue squandering the natural resources at the current rate, then very soon we won’t have any raw materials left even for the vitally necessary products.

90% of what we produce today consists of oil, be it energy, plastic materials, and so on. When the oil reserves end, we will be left with nothing. But nevertheless, we still keep on squandering it.

Thus, on one hand nature places a barrier before us in the form of ecology, climate, and resources, and on the other hand, egoism no longer pushes us forward. It asks questions that we cannot find answers to here, in our world, in this small children’s room where we had so much fun playing until now.

Today the situation already resembles suicide: We are irrationally using up the last remaining resources.

We have to understand that because of this, we find ourselves in the zone of choice. This is where freedom of will emerges, the freedom for us to start understanding the program of our development: “Who are we? Why are we here? What for?”, and together with us, the rest of the world. Now is exactly the time for us to solve this challenge. Otherwise humanity will find itself in a truly hopeless impasse.

In reality the gist of the problem is not the financial crisis, the technology crisis, or the crisis of families. We are in a crisis with ourselves. We have to understand who we are and what we are here for, both from the point of view of nature, which obligates us to this, and from our own point of view. Only then will we be able to set things right inside of us and in the world.
[50172]
From the Talk about a New Book 7/11/2011

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There are two contrasting states constantly alternating in creation: darkness and Light, separation and closeness, oppositeness and adhesion, a reverse form and an equal form. Our path unfolds through these opposite states and the essence is always: Are we “for” the Creator or against Him? The only difference is: What is creation’s level of awareness of its own state?

At first we go through these states unconsciously, which is called the “still” level of development. Then, on the “vegetative level,” we start to gradually understand them. Next, on the “animate level” we already attain ourselves in a certain way, but we still don’t know in relation to Whom we change and how. And when I already understand that I change in relation to the Creator and according to Him, this is already the “human level.”

Our entire history lies in this kind of development, based upon constant opposites: on our polar difference from the Creator or our similarity to Him. All of these states are already instilled, determined, and fixed in the plan of creation, connecting into one cause and effect chain that we have to go through.

There is nothing we can add to these states besides our awareness. And finally, we begin to realize that this process is aimed toward a specific goal. We aspire to discover and attain it on our own, to understand what is happening to us, what is this film we are living in. That’s when we start having the freedom of choice to participate in this process consciously, out of our own desire—to aspire to this goal or to resist it.

In our days, all of humanity is entering this very interesting phase of development where we have to gain awareness and to participate on our own, to decide whether we want to accelerate it or do not want to. We have to find how we can participate in this process on our own, influence its speed, and express our agreement or disagreement with the states we go through.

If I connect every state to the realization of the plan of creation, inside of which I develop, then I thereby accelerate my development, since it depends only on my awareness of my state. And the more I push myself to find out who I am in relation to the One who develops me, the only force that exists besides me, that is to say, the more I develop my participation, the more I strengthen my independence, my own thought, understanding, and desire.

That is how I create my “I,” which is born inside of creation—the goal for which this entire process is intended. And the final point is to feel the force of the plan in which we exist, and to cling to it. As for our independence, it lies in asking this higher thought to reveal to us the opportunity to participate in its work independently.
[50048]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/1/11, Shamati

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