Question: What is preferable, to develop each friend individually or to magnify the image of the ideal group?

Answer: It is also necessary to develop each friend. But if you have a large group, this could be complicated because you know some and with some you do not. It is not important. Their participation in the general common work already testifies that you accept them as the people closest to you.

Imagine that every person sitting here, both men and women, are the closest particles in the huge collective soul; so we have gathered like this. I am from the previous level, you are from the next level, but all of us are connected. Imagine all the generations and incarnations, an immense soul, billions of billions of particles.

After all, each one of us is changing rapidly every second. And each time he is a new person with a new soul. The body remains the same, whereas inside of us we pass through states much faster than an electron orbits an atom. Every state is new.

From all of the states, from all of the souls, the billions of particles that there are in all the generations, we have each other—the closest. That is what we need to think about the group and that is how to relate to the friends.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Question: When we come to Israel for conventions and holidays, we feel a unique connection and happiness. And when we return home, everything becomes exactly the opposite. Why does that happen?

Answer: When I go abroad, I am not affected by the change of location and society. I can enjoy the beautiful views, but all the time I am inside myself. My personal micro-climate does not change.

But your problem is that when you go somewhere, you immerse into the local atmosphere and fall under a strong influence from the outside that knocks you off track.

It is necessary to get less caught up with the influence of the surrounding society. Suppose that around you someone is spinning, running, doing something while you need to remain one step higher and live within completely different thoughts and expectations. You must learn to do this.

If you want to reach this as fast as possible, then you must be recharged by the group, and when you leave the lesson in the morning, you need to be afraid of losing that warmth, that group feeling that appears in you as a result of the lesson. After all, our classes are required only to invite the Upper Light onto the desire to connect.

The yearning for unity comes before everything. After that the Light must arrive according to your prayer. And after that, in the connection between you, we begin to feel the Creator. You must be in this work all the time.

But if you fall under the influence of the external egoistic field, this indicates that you have not advanced. Throughout the day you must return to the need for feeling the center of the group at least several times.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/14, Questions and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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If the anointed Cohen [priest] sins, bringing guilt to the people, then he shall bring for his sin which he has committed, an unblemished young bull as a sin offering to the Lord.

If a leader [of Israel] sins and unintentionally commits one of all the commandments of the Lord, which may not be committed, incurring guilt;

If one person of the people of the land commits a sin unintentionally, by his committing one of the commandments of the Lord which may not be committed, incurring guilt;

if his sin that he committed is made known to him, he shall bring his sacrifice: an unblemished female goat, for his sin that he committed. (Leviticus 4:3, 22, 27, 28)

Question: What is this chain that begins with the priest and ends with the common man?

Answer: This is the gradation of desires in a person according to the ego that is revealed in him.

The fact is there is no sin. Nobody is guilty because all sins derive from our original state. As it is written: “I created the evil inclination, I created the Torah as a spice for it; for the Light in it will return him to the good” (Kiddushin 30b).

If we study the Torah correctly, in a circle, in friendship, under special conditions, then through this we awaken the influence of the unique power of the characteristic of bestowal on ourselves. The Light of the Torah influences us and helps to change the property of reception to bestowal, passing from an individual nature to altruism.

So if a person puts himself into a particular society and works on himself in a circle of friends, all of our sins are gradually revealed in us. At the time of receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai, it became clear that the Light of Torah acts on people only on condition that they yearn for connection, for mutual Arvut (guarantee).  “Torah” is derived from the word “Ohr” (Light).

The circle in which we clarify things symbolizes the position around our immense ego and our work with it. And if we want to rise above the ego, then the point of connection between us, called “Moses,” goes up the mountain and enters into contact with the Creator. This point is our spiritual guide.

All of the egoistic desires are called Egypt. First we exit them, receive instructions, the Torah, on Mount Sinai, which is the means for their correction, and begin to connect. And when we want to connect more, we discover the Sinai desert, “mutual hatred” (“Sina” – hatred), and along with this we yearn for connection. And yet, the more that we aspire to connection, the stronger is the rejection that we discover.

All of Egypt (our ego) begins to be discovered in us again. This is what we call the “sins” that are discovered in us. And they were all prepared from the start; so everything that is revealed in a person is what was prepared for him. And we ourselves don’t commit any sin.

In the Torah is written all the laws of purity, correction, of our internal “sins” that were prepared for us from the start. As has been said, “I created the evil inclination, I created the Torah as a spice.” This evil inclination is gradually discovered in us and we correct it for the good through yearning for connection and approaching the Upper Light.
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From KabTV’s Secrets of the Eternal Book 11/27/15

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The Zohar with the “Sulam Commentary,” “Parshat Tzav,” paragraph 50: And further, “Fire shall be kept burning upon the altar continually….” This is the Torah; this is what is said about it. “Certainly my words are like fire” says the Creator, you certainly won’t extinguish them, for a transgression does not extinguish the Torah. But a transgression extinguishes a Mitzvah….

There is Torah and there is Mitzvah. Torah is the general Light that acts upon us and advances us. This is the general system.

Suppose that in the physical world physics and the laws in which we exist help us explore some space. That is how it is with the Light of Torah also. It keeps us in spiritual levels all the time; it makes no difference whether we are found above, below, in descent or ascent. We are found in descents and ascents all the time since we must constantly fall into the ego and transform it into altruism until we move through our entire ego and correct it through altruism.

The intentions in order to receive are left on the side and we move our desires to the other side with intentions in order to bestow. The fall into the ego and our departure from it are similar to the movement of a piston up and down, from the lowest critical point to the highest point in which we are found in contrasting states: either with an altruistic intent or completely egoistic. In order to get out of this state there is a general force called Torah, the Light that advances us.

The fall into a low state is called a sin. The ascent to the higher state is called a Mitzvah, correction. We are constantly found between sin and correction, sin – correction. So it is said, “There is no Tzadik (righteous) on earth who will do good and not sin” (Midrash Kohelet Rabbah 7), and only after he corrects the sin does he become a Tzadik. The state in which I am found in the high point after I have corrected the sin is called a Mitzvah. That is how the ignition is created in me. Just as a piston that reaches the high point when it compresses the fuel mixture and it is fired, so also the Light appears in me, which is an additional moving force through which I advance.

Thanks to that power of movement I begin to understand more, to recognize, to see, to be integrated into everything. This is exactly what helps me and forces me to descend into the next situation, into an even lower point, into greater ego. After all, if I accumulate sufficient power, then I can descend, perceive my egoistic desire, descend into absolute darkness, pass through the low point, and rise again.

A Mitzvah is a high state, additional Light that is created as a result of burning my egoistic power, transforming it into altruism. This means that to the general Light of Torah is added a Light called Mitzvah. Both the Torah and the Mitzvah exist only in the upper part. The additional Light makes it possible for me to descend into the lowest and most egoistic part. But the further I descend, the power of the Light of the Mitzvah also descends. So when I reach the lower part, I am ready to pass through it only because I have a small general Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light), which is called the Light of Torah. It reaches me from the environment, from the group, like a liquid that flows from one vessel to another vessel.

Question: Why don’t we explain this to people?

Answer: It is up to a person himself to produce all of these states within himself. Otherwise, my words will just remain a nice example for him. After a day or two, even after two minutes, he will forget everything. But in spite of it all he still must search and obligate himself to pass through these states, like a child who is intentionally given a task so that he will sweat and try, and so he grows. The ready made example doesn’t help.

Question: But is a person prepared to contend with this alone?

Answer: No, he can only do this with the help of the group. Towards where would I direct the Light that I received after I descended? It is towards the group, just like a receptacle.

For example, the torque of the crankshaft operates the piston. The rotary torque that accumulates the energy is the group. So I can always advance up and down through back and forth movements towards the group.
[134305]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 11/27/13

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Question: The friends may be great and feel the meaning of the concept of the center of the group and of one heart, but what should I do if I don’t feel that and don’t know how to work correctly?

Answer: This is clarified in the mutual work. You have to start seeing the friends through the center of the group, united as one. They may not know that they are and may not understand it, but you will see that they are actually already in spiritual connection.

You have to see their advanced states, and it depends on your desire to see them as such. I, for example, want to see how successful you all are since you are like my own children, and so I see that. But it is because of the concern and the desire that you should attain it that I see your future form.

Seeing the friends as successful means seeing them united and revealing the Creator in order to delight Him, which means seeing them in spiritual states.

We should see all of reality as one system. The corporeal world and the spiritual world don’t exist separately; they are a unified whole. It all depends only on the eyes of the beholder.

The Creator is revealed among the friends, which means that there is a force of mutual bestowal operating among them, that’s all. The Creator is revealed only in the right connection between us. This is called the Creator. It is in this connection that we turn to that force.

He isn’t found anywhere else. We mustn’t picture or imagine that He is in another reality, but only among us. The Creator has no form. There is a certain inconceivable identity that is revealed if we provide Him with the system to be revealed in. If all the components are properly connected, we discover Him.

It is as if there is a magnetic or an electrostatic field and if we build a system to detect that field, the system will begin to work: the lights will turn on, and the wheels will spin. After all, we have properly assembled the machine and now it perceives the force of the field that is around it, the black energy.

We live in the world of this energy that is revealed in it in different lower forms, such as the force of gravity and other physical forces, but we want to discover the primary force in which the upper thought and the desire are concealed and not the outcomes, not the particular fields.

These fields are revealed in matter, since matter is already arranged that way. This is the reason that we study matter. On the corporeal level we discover these outcomes on the surface of the earth and in the universe, but when we ascend to a different level of the connection of matter we discover a different field. It is called the “dweller (Shochen) who dwells in the Shechina.”
[133711]
From from 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/20/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The king responds favorably to the proposal by Haman and informs him of his decision to destroy all the Jews throughout the kingdom.

Mordechai conveys the message to Esther about the need to go to the king with a plea for mercy. However, Esther sets a condition and through Mordechai, she turns to her people with a call to connect and unite. She is then ready to turn to the king with the request for mercy and pardon for those condemned to death. The fate of the Jews depended solely on their unity.

This Is How We Win

There are many “Hamans” throughout the world. Every nation has its Haman, the main hater of the Jews, and woe to the Jews if they forget this.

The condition that transforms the Jews into a people is the condition for which they stood at Mount Sinai: their readiness to join together and answer positively to the call for unification. That is how this happened in the days of Purim 2,500 years ago. The king remembered that he owed Mordechai for saving his life. Esther drafted Mordechai’s request before the king and the Jews were saved. Much later, King Cyrus of Persia, Esther’s son, helped them return to the land of Israel and build the second Beit ha Mikdash (Temple).
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From the brochure about the holiday of Purim, 03/2015

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Question: In the future society built upon spiritual laws and operating as a single body, will any personal goals remain with any person or will there only be collective goals?

Answer: Everything that is relevant to our physical bodies will be arranged in the simplest way because all of the desires and goals connected to corporeal existence belong to the animate level. Clearly everyone requires nourishment, sex, and family, and you arrange for all of this, yet no more than necessary.

After all, nothing will interest you besides attaining the goal in the group, in your society. There, within the society, you will feel your life is on another level, on a human, spiritual level. So our physical life will be very simple.

Question: In the new world will there be scientists, teachers, and musicians? Let’s say that I am a violinist, will I have a personal goal?

Answer: Your goal will be to play the violin as beautifully and well as possible in order to be integrated into society and to cause connection between people. After all, if you bring benefit to the general connection and strengthen it, you will achieve your personal goal—living within everyone.

Question: Is our goal to feel ourselves connected as one person with one heart?

Answer: This is not a goal but a means. The goal is to feel the source of life and feel that I am useful to everyone when I love others as myself.

Question: The goal of a violinist is to become the best performer. What will be his goal in the corrected world?

Answer: It will also be to become the best violinist! Yet today for you the meaning of “being the best” is getting lots of money and respect. So the ego pushes you to be the best with a personal pragmatic goal.

However, in the world of tomorrow, you will yearn to become the best violinist not for the ego, but from love of others. What motivates you is not self-love at the expense of others but the desire to serve people. Everything is completely different: from the beginning of the work to its end.

This approach makes it possible for you to feel all of creation through the heart and mind of society. And then you will see the upper world. You won’t feel the animal world like you do today; a world that is perceived through the five senses since our bodies belong to the animate level. The new world will be felt through the five collective senses that are built after gathering all the desires and passions of friends.

So you will feel the world on a higher level. Instead of the usual seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, senses that are called: Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut will be created with you.
[135108]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 4/29/14

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The Scroll of Esther 3:8: Haman said to King Achashverosh, There is one nation, scattered and dispersed among the nations throughout the provinces of your kingdom, whose laws are unlike those of any other nation and who do not obey the laws of the King. It is not in the King’s interest to tolerate them. Unity was always the basis and the foundation of the Jewish people and was the power that didn’t let them dissolve while in exile.

There is a wonderful destiny for this unity, and at the beginning of it was Adam, the first man to rise above himself.

Spiritual Heritage

Adam laid the foundation for the spiritual history of humanity. He was the first among all humans who ascended above the properties of ego and self-love to a higher level of love of others. In this higher characteristic he discovered the upper world, a world outside of himself and outside of his ego.

His students continued the spiritual elevation of Adam, and with the passage of 20 generations, this chain reached ancient Babylon, which was the cradle of the present civilization.

Abraham lived here and continued the way of Adam. After gathering people from among the Babylonians who possessed an identical outlook, Abraham went with them to the land of Israel in order to give the whole world an example of real unity. The continuation of this group became the same people that still haunts humanity.

Thus, the Jewish people arose originally not on an ethnic basis, but an ideological one. Our ancestors picked up an idea, and throughout the history of humanity, and it alone determines our common path: the path to the universal unification of humanity.

With the passage of almost 1,000 years after leaving ancient Babylon, we fell from the level of love of others into increasing egoism, and with this we again found ourselves in the same Babylon, and in exile.
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From the brochure about the holiday of Purim, 03/2015

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Our advancement in the modern world is different from it was in the past in that there is no need to struggle for nourishment, shelter, health care, and the like. We have already arranged the necessary conditions for physical existence for ourselves. So the blows will come from the wrong connection between us, societal and national disputes.

Essentially, deficiencies will no longer be physical; it will not be a sensation of hunger or discomfort but a sensation of heaviness and emptiness in life, which people will try to suppress with drugs and alcohol. Life will turn in a completely different direction if we don’t start with the right education and information.

The problem is that a person doesn’t see a goal before him.

Question: Which goals will be in front of us in the new world?

Answer: To see them, there is a need for a new sense—a “group” sense. This sense will be discovered as a result of the connection between people. We are entering into a stage of development such that we cannot see any suitable goal before us if we don’t supply ourselves with group or social senses.

I must observe things not through my eyes, but through the eyes of the group; hear not with my ears, but with the ears of the group. It is necessary to create an image of one person consisting of a multitude of people yearning to connect together into some kind of single whole. I begin to see life, its goals and the means for attaining them, through this collective image. Everything is only through this collective sense.

Question: Will any personal goals remain for me?

Answer: Personal goals will remain only in case that they are included in the goals of the group. I cannot realize them apart from others. A personal goal can exist only within the group and can be attained through group participation.

Question: But isn’t the group composed of individuals?

Answer: Individual people will disappear within a group that has a common goal. It is clear that everyone will be concerned for what is imperative for his existence: his house, his family. Yet if we are talking about the goal of life that his soul longs for and to which he directs all of his thoughts, aspirations, and yearnings, the goal will be within the group.

After all, a person will attain life on a higher dimension through the group. He will begin to differentiate between life felt through the physical body and life that is felt through connection with others, meaning through the soul. This is a completely different life on an absolutely different level of existence, with other goals, attainments, and powers.

Just as a cat cannot understand a person, so at the present time we are also not able to understand this common image that all of us build together when we connect in the right way.
[135025]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” 4/29/14

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Our work isn’t over when we reach adhesion with the Creator. The very next moment we will find ourselves in a shattered state again. After we transcend the Machsom (barrier) and reach adhesion with the Creator, we fall again and feel hatred, rejection, and disappointment otherwise further correction wouldn’t be possible.

After the Machsom, a person falls into worse states than the ones we experience today. Our current state is the weakest, without any real ups and downs. We are simply marching in the same spot—one millimeter forward and one millimeter backward.

We are like babies who are being fully taken care of and who suffer only from very simple things: from heat or from cold, and from the unusual taste of food. In the meantime we are like spoiled as babies. But later we will be required to do some serious work.

“Thou hast hemmed me in behind and before…,” everything comes from Him. But I have to discover that. This is my work. I have to discover that the whole world is the picture that the Creator has depicted so that I will discover Him through it, in every image, in every nuance.

I have to discover the Creator with all my impressions of the world. There is no other way to discover the Creator if there is no concealment among us through which I can discover Him. The concealment has to turn into a revelation like black letters on white background.

Therefore, we have to be thankful for the bad as well as for the good—these are the letters of our work. Try and see that you gradually acquire these feelings if you make efforts.

Even if it takes you 15 years, it isn’t considered a delay in your development. After all, we know that small children develop very quickly in the first years of their life and go through many states, but they don’t understand the changes they go through and later don’t remember them.

We also think that nothing happens, but inside us a small human being is already growing from the drop of spiritual semen. However, he cannot work with his vessels consciously yet and this is the state we are reaching now. The main thing that helps our quick maturation is taking care of the public.
[135000]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/14/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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