The following was sent to me by Maxim Matushevsky, a Bnei Baruch member from Moscow:
Do you remember your first steps as you began to study music? You sit on an uncomfortable stool with your feet barely touching the floor. Before you there is a disobedient and stiff keyboard, above it is a music book full of scribble, unintelligible signs, and notes in Italian. Next to you there is a teacher.

You try hard to understand what is encoded on this printed sheet, while almost breaking the joints of your fingers as you attempt to place them on the right keys in the right order and with the right pressure. The cacophony of your efforts fill the room. Your teacher is displeased. You consider yourself a dunce and a loser.

You hate the composer. He must be a pervert: how can one compose this let alone play it? He must have had five hands. You are angry with your teacher, your parents, yourself and this stupid instrument. Meanwhile the sun shines outside, boys play soccer and laugh. No! I will never play this! Let me go!

Days have passed. Your fingers get used to striking the right keys. You can even discern some fragments of a melody (wow!) that sounds not too bad.

Weeks have passed. You no longer look at the music sheet, your fingers carry you along the keyboard. Suddenly you catch yourself enjoying this beautiful multilayered polyphonic melody! You are proud of yourself; you experience an ocean of emotions. So that’s what the composer experienced when he created this beautiful music! What if I put an accent on this place? And in doing so you hear a new sound and new emotions arise!

This music is beautiful and infinite! You feel an affinity with the composer. You are thankful to him for helping you to experience this excitement. You are thankful to your teacher, who did not spare you and made you learn to read music. You are free and happy!

But where is the freedom? You strictly play the music following what someone composed in accordance with the strict laws of harmony. However, now you can contribute your tiny part through the performance and interpretation of the composition, without breaking its plan and integrity. You become a co-composer! It’s your instrument, it’s YOUR music, and it is composed for YOU to play it!

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A question I received: Why can’t our human society reach the state of mutual guarantee naturally, while staying on the animate level like cells in a body?

My Answer: A human being is far too complicated a creature to connect with others this way. Here’s why.

Egoism becomes qualitatively bigger on each level of nature, going from the still level, to the vegetative, to the animate, and the human. The bigger an object’s egoism, the more individualistic it is, and the more incapable it is of uniting with others. Therefore, as one develops, one feels more separate from others.

Nowadays, it’s not only the psychologists and sociologists, but also the economists and the politicians who are discovering that the world has become interconnected and therefore we – humanity – must unite. However, they believe that they are able to do this using a corporeal method, and that everything will settle down if only we create a world bank, a world government, a world upbringing, and a world-wide connection.

However, after having a few more meetings like the recent G20 summit, they will begin to understand that they lack the method to unite. Unfortunately, before they realize this, people may have to go through great suffering, including a lack of safety, a feeling of disorientation, total powerlessness, and universal grief. People cannot bear to be in a state of uncertainty, since constant alarm is worse than death. Our minds cannot function under such circumstances. Yet all of this may happen in order for us to realize that the only way to achieve unification among us is to rise above our egoistic nature.

This is not so on the still, vegetative, and animate levels, where all of nature and its parts are instinctively, naturally interconnected. They supplement each other and interact with each other harmoniously, without any freedom of choice or any decision-making.

Unification between people, however, can only be achieved when each person does it consciously. Unlike the other levels of nature, the Creator did not just make us unite by giving us instincts for this. Our unification is possible only if we acquire the quality of bestowal and love, where everyone participates and joins with everyone. To do this, we have to rise above ourselves and our egoism, and achieve the Biblical commandment of “love your neighbor as yourself.”

This is how the quality of the Creator will be revealed among us, and we will become similar to Him. We will then understand why He acted this way in regard to us.

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In the News (from Northwestern University): “Financial Risk Taking: Blame It On the Genes!” A new Northwestern University study links specific variants of two genes that regulate dopamine and serotonin neurotransmission to risk-taking in financial investment decisions.

In the News (from Nature Precedings): Ethnic populations representing areas throughout California were compared regarding cognitive ability, socioeconomic position, and mortality. Cognition and socioeconomic position were inversely correlated with mortality.

My Comment: One finds freedom only by attaining a new level – the level of bestowal and love. There is no freedom on the egoistic level, where everything is defined by our natural egoism. Freedom begins with attaining the quality opposite to egoism, and then finding an intelligent balance – the middle line – between this quality and the egoistic quality.

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A question I received: If there is none else besides Him, and we are all controlled like robots, how can we criticize anything in this world, the way you do? How can you say people should be doing this instead of that, if all is done by the Creator?

My Answer: A developmental force – the Light – descends from the Creator and continuously awakens new Reshimot – egoistic desires in a person. If a person doesn’t correct them, they “pile up,” bringing the person and the society to a crisis.

The only free act available to a person is to correct the Reshimot with the help of the right environment. A person is a robot in every other respect. Kabbalah teaches us how to make the only possible free action, which is why Kabbalah is being revealed now, when human society is becoming global and interdependent. Now each person depends on everyone, and everyone depends on each person. Under these conditions, it is now possible to realize our freedom of will. In the past, when humanity did not have this opportunity yet, Kabbalah remained hidden, because Kabbalah is the method for man to reveal the Creator through the quality of love for his neighbor.

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A question I received: Baal HaSulam says that our entire freedom lies only in choosing our environment. But if we were to choose our environment now, wouldn’t our choice be based on what we received from our previous environment?

My Answer: We choose a new environment under the influence of a new spiritual Reshimo: suddenly a desire for something “beyond this world” arises in us, and then we are somehow brought into contact with a new environment – Bnei Baruch. This is where your new path begins. And it’s the same for everyone. This is why we (Bnei Baruch) exist.

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All thoughts and desires, whether private or social, are sent to us from above, from the Creator. They all stem from the one single force of Nature (see the article “There Is None Else Beside Him”). In this case, it is necessary to be in constant inner dialogue with the Creator, to constantly examine what you discover in your mind and heart, trying to understand what the Creator is telling you, how He organizes you, and what your reaction ought to be.

First, one must realize that everything is sent from above in order to develop us. Hence one must receive it with gratitude, because it was especially chosen to suit his state and to ensure his optimal development for attaining the Creator.

After that one must make a request. After all, if a person doesn’t feel a desire to advance, if he feels like he has more important matters to attend to and other problems to solve first, that he will take care of them quickly and then return to the Creator – this too is sent to him from above, in order for him to discern, “What for?”

By engaging in calculations as to what is more important, a person forgets that he is being played with from above, that this is the Creator showing him how easily he is disconnected from Him. After all, the Creator becomes revealed only by virtue of one’s efforts to maintain a connection with Him. Everything that exists within and around me comes from Him. He exists within me, organizing everything that transpires within me and to me.

He leaves only one point independent from Him: my reaction. This is where my “I” can be expressed. This point is within me, and it awakens, becomes revealed to me, if I forcefully hang on to the realization that the Creator governs me, my thoughts and desires, from above.

This point, wherein I discern His governance from above, wherein I desire to feel Him and answer Him – is the point of truth, the beginning of one’s “I.”

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A question I received: Free will does not exist in this world, but only environmental pressures. The only free choice that exists is which group of people one wishes to associate with. One must recognize oneself as a wretched egoist – and not only as an egoist, but as the worst of the worst ilk that has ever walked this glorious planet. One cannot get to appreciate the extent of one’s abhorrent nature without the help of Ohr Makif (the Surrounding Light), which descends on us during the study of Kabbalah. When one perceives oneself as this grotesque creature, this results in prayer, and one is then granted by the mercy of the Creator freedom from one’s evil inclinations, and becomes one with the Creator.

Now for my question: Given the fact that free will does not exist, how can an individual rationally see oneself as the worst? Yes, one may come to recognize that one is at odds with the Creator, but how and why is it necessary to come to realize that one is the worst of the worst of the worst? Would it not suffice to just see oneself as an egoist, like the other egoists? Why the worst? And how can one believe that of oneself when one is aware that free will does not exist?

My Answer: Only a new, spiritual environment will give you the confidence and forces to demand the Light of Correction. Then, in this Light you will discover that you are the only evil egoist who is harming everyone. However, rather than making you depressed, this realization will give you a push to demand the Light of Correction from the Creator.

On the other hand, if the environment will not give you the force to do this and the importance of the goal, then upon discovering your egoistic qualities as evil, you will fall into depression and despair.

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