We already understand that we are all connected by a close mutual bond and that this connection works in the world differently than in the past. A new condition, a new coefficient, has been added to our interrelationships, which we still cannot take into account because of our nature. We are not familiar with the system we have been hurled into, and so we cannot do anything about it.

Therefore, Kabbalists say: We should first learn what the system is and understand the situation. Then will we know how to arrange our life.

We cannot continue to advance by our own powers. If we refuse to learn, we will learn by terrible blows that will show us how stubborn and ignorant we are. In any case, we will have to “go back to school” and study the science of Kabbalah. It wasn’t given to us without reason—it is about the system of reality opposite to us, about the upper world.

We should not delude ourselves: By studying this system, we will not be able to correct the financial system or find new business management methods under the new conditions. With the study of the science of Kabbalah  we will only realize that we must ask for the power of correction.

The method of Kabbalah will not enable us to continue “improving” the world by our merciless egoism. It will only enable us to acquire a new power, the power of bestowal, in addition to our power of receiving. Only when the power of bestowal dominates the power of bestowal will we know what to do with ourselves and with the world.

The wisdom of Kabbalah is not a practical manual for solving all problems by using the usual egotistic approach. The studies will only show us how to ask for an internal change. Only having changed internally will we understand what to do with the world.

This is why the method of Kabbalah had to be revealed externally, artificially. It doesn’t grow in us naturally from within. It is given to us from the outside so that we will exert effort and ask to correct ourselves.

Here we are given free will: I am facing a new system, a new method, and now I have to develop the will to change inside me. I am in my ego facing a new system, a new world. The science of Kabbalah is what adapts me to the new world. It helps me reach a state in which I ask for correction. Then I will change: Besides my egoism, I will also have the attribute of bestowal, and I will understand how to approach the new world correctly.

[55364]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/22/2011, “The Nation”

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Question: Why is the network of our broken relationships not revealed to us? Why are we not shown the cause of all evil so that we know where to put efforts?

Answer: It’s because then we would correct ourselves out of hopelessness. Our efforts would be regular egoistic work. It would be like earning money for food. In spirituality, it is not considered work if I am pushed by the simple threat of hunger.

In reality, without any need, I have to want to strive for the goal for which I feel no need. My nature does not oblige me, and I develop a completely free desire, independent from anything. Bestowal is not conditional for me; I do not need it; I do not depend on anybody or anything. Like the Creator, I am above everything.

And then, I discover my dependence on others; I want to bestow, to serve them, and to be the last, the lowest of all. Otherwise, the work is done not by me but by the Creator.

In my spiritual work, there is a point that I need to grow constantly: the point of freedom that is totally unknown to us in our world. At this point, I depend on no one and can do nothing. The whole world is at my feet with no effort on my part. This is where there is the opportunity for real work.

To bring me to this point, I am sent troubles and problems, thanks to which I learn. But then, when I actually get acquainted with the spiritual world, my work will turn into its opposite, as if switched to reverse. I will be told: “Take everything!” And I will refuse this gift.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/20/2011, “The Nation”

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Question: How much longer are we going to suffer like stubborn children that do not wish to create a good environment? How do we overcome our stubbornness?

Answer: We need to convince ourselves of the need to advance. Otherwise, we will suffer. We should be ashamed of the fact that the world is suffering, and we are not giving it what we can and what it needs. We truly should feel guilty for the suffering of the world. Let this shame burn us, finally causing us to do something.

The individual calculations that we use to justify ourselves as we sit home and do nothing are of no use here. Regardless of what may seem to us, we need to use all our strength to be imbued by the suffering in the world and see that we are responsible for leading it to correction.

It is truly a big problem if we treat the world and people with neglect, thinking: “Let them suffer; maybe then they’ll change.” They cannot change. Only we can change, and then through us, they will be provided with ready decisions.

On the spiritual path we reveal that the world is our own system. Now imagine that for many years you purposely caused people harm, treated them as enemies, and enjoyed it, and now suddenly you discover that they are your children. Imagine the misery you feel now, as you remember everything that they were forced to endure because of you.

This is the part of shame that is revealed to us. Therefore, in order to reduce it, we need to hurry ahead of time by rejecting personal calculations. Whatever happens, do not pay attention to the behavior of people. After all, the Creator purposely presents them in this manner so that you would think only about bestowal and wish them good.
[54915]
From the 1st Lesson, Kabbalah Convention in Toronto, 9/6/2011

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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.
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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.
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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).
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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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