The next level after love of friends is love the other as you love yourself. We connect not only with the point in the heart but also with all the other values which complement one another like one harmonious chorus. And then I begin to love all the attributes of all the friends because they complement me and I complement them, forming one complete whole.

Through the point in the heart we are not able to connect in order to reach equivalence of form with the Creator. We reach equivalence of form with Him when all of our attributes become completely connected, complementary with each other. Therefore, love the other as yourself is the level on which unity, that is, the Creator is revealed in man.

From here it is clear how important my friends are to me. Their importance is that without them I am not able to reach anything. We are all parts of one creation and we broke and feel ourselves as divided. Everyone is an egoist, feels only himself, and others he feels only to the extent that according to his concepts, they can help him or bother him. This means that friends are only important in mutual work, and it is only when I constantly annul myself in front of them that I am able to connect to them. This is the importance of the group.

Attainment of the goal depends on our constant longing from the beginning egoistic point of each person, the point in the heart, via the group, via the connection to the revelation of the Creator within it. This means the quality of the One, the Unique, the Unified.

The “Creator” is specifically an attribute and not something that exists personally. We can’t feel anything in separation. We feel the manifestation only on matter. Thus, when we speak of a certain force, we mean where and how it is expressed.

Accordingly, when we speak of the Creator, we mean the attribute of unity, uniqueness, love, bestowal, the attribute of abundance, the completeness that is revealed in us. Otherwise, we can’t speak of Him since we don’t know how it can happen externally to us.

So the group must reach a state where it will demonstrate the attribute of the Creator.

From here appear many different conclusions: “How to make a friend”? How to relate to him: as to greater or smaller than myself? Like to a student or to a Rav?

It turns out that all of the answers are correct: Also as an equal, also as a student, and also as a Rav. At first sight, how can he be equal to me, if all of us have completely different natures!? He can be equal to me only in one thing: I am not able to attain the Creator without him and he can’t without me. It seems that from the beginning we are partners in adversity.

And afterward we begin to operate in the following way: Each one of us needs to be above the friend in order to help him, and to be under the friend in order to know how to receive inspiration from what he has, to receive from him the recognition of the importance of the goal, and to yearn for unity. This longing is lacking in each one of us and will always be lacking. It is possible to receive it only from others.

Thus I work with the friends: He is greater than me, he is smaller than me, he equals me. And then a connection really takes place. The main point of this work is called, “Make yourself a Rav and buy yourself a friend.”
[92451]
From the Georgia Convention 11/06/12, Lesson 2

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Question: Currently the entire Internet is buzzing with prognoses that some unpleasant events will take place in December of 2012. What does Kabbalah say about this? Please reassure the world!

Answer: How can I calm you down?

I think it all depends on us, including you. I am not going to calm you down, but completely the opposite because we indeed exist in a very sharp freedom of will and December and the entire next year depend on us. In addition, these states, which we will have to go through, are completely determined only by our world group and by no one else.

Thus, I will not be calming down anyone of you. On contrary, you have to feel very clearly that the entire world depends on you. You have to consciously realize this, meaning that you need to have a serious attitude toward our task, a constant mutual aspiration in your hearts.

Do you feel how our hearts are gathering more and more into one ball? Only this will save our situation and will make it wonderful. It will be wonderful in the sense that we will remember that we have to be closer and more united until we get all of our one heart together. Then we will not be fearful of any calendar.
[92669]
From the Georgia Convention 11/6/12, Lesson 3

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Question: You say that envy helps us advance. I don’t understand what we need envy for.

Answer: I envy everyone. Yesterday when people sang during the meal, I really envied them: Why can’t I sing like that? Or when someone quickly grasps the material that we study, I also envy him: Why can he do so and I can’t? Is this envy bad?

Imagine that there are people here that seem on a much higher level than you; it is very good that they have attained something. But I haven’t? How can that be? How can they and not I?

You may say: “So do you want them not to attain this level either?” No, I want them to advance even more, but I want to advance with them, which means that it is positive envy that pulls me forward. I don’t want to bring them down, I want to follow them forward; it is a very important point.

Envy usually means that I don’t want the other to have what I envy in him, but for us envy is different—it means that I want the same thing that I envy.

Question: I have never envied anyone. How can I envy a friend when I know that the Creator has given him a certain attribute? Suppose there is a good computer and a bad computer that cannot be good, this is how the Creator has made it.

Answer: No you are calming yourself by that, because you are lazy. Now you have to feel sorry that you are lazy.

Question: Yes, I am lazy. I understand that this is my attribute and there is nothing I can do about it, so I say to the Creator: “That’s the way we are, the way You have created us, so what do you want of us?!”

Answer: First of all, all the questions a person asks are legitimate and right, since they stem from the desire in him; there is nothing we can do about it. But the whole group should evoke everyone else, otherwise they will continue to sleep. Here we have to play.

Why do we organize different games now? Because I have to show the friends that I am on a higher level than they are, and that there is something else in me: “What, you don’t know yet? I already know this,” etc. We have to tease one another and to hint that there is something great in spirituality, since otherwise we will not move. The Creator will remain concealed until we discover Him by our equivalence of form, so there is nothing we can do. We have to envy one another.

Envy is an essential attribute. Everything is created for a reason. Under no circumstances should you suppress anything in you. You should feel envy.
[92503]
From the Georgia Convention 11/06/12, Lesson 2

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A human being (Adam) is a new action, new creation developing according to the internal program, inherent in the primary “drop of semen.” To this program, this form, given by the father, the mother’s material is added. Then the program begins to be realized, manifest itself, and the material takes the form of a human being.

A person is born from a mother like an animal. However, we talk about our inner structure, how we give birth to ourselves spiritually. And here is a special condition before us: We have to create our form ourselves.

Question: But is an animal not capable of this?

Answer: An animal remains an animal. It cannot become a human being. It is the foundation above which he is formed. In general, the still, vegetative, and animate nature is the platform above which we build the human form.

Question: Who can build it?

Answer: The “drop of semen” that lies above the animal degree. It contains everything, except the material. But when the material is added to it, the necessary form does not appear automatically like in the animal world; we have to find it ourselves. In the spiritual world, a person creates himself with the Creator’s help.

Initially, I do not know my future spiritual form. I should want it, look for it and try, going in faith above reason as much as I can. I act, striving for something that seems like bestowal to me, and these efforts suddenly bring me to a “discovery,” a new form. Yes, I was thinking about it all that time, but still could not imagine what it would be in reality. Now, when the form of bestowal is dressed in me, I attain it.

How did I get it, not knowing where to go exactly? That is why it is called a “discovery”—it is a surprise for me, not an expected result.

Question: So, what is my free choice?

Answer: Your free choice is to seek this form with the help of the environment, by all possible means. Namely the environment builds my future state, creating its form according to the principle of a matrix that puts pressure on a tin ingot from both sides, giving it the desired form. I am that ingot, the initial material, lying between the two parts of the press: The group is one side and the teacher and studies are the other.

And the fact is that I put myself under this press. I am ready to accept various forms and just want to annul myself, like an ingot that could be given any shape. Thus I acquire the human form.

Question: Where is freedom here?

Answer: It is impossible to be just free, if you are free, it means from something. In reality, you can be independent only from the evil inclination. That is why the Creator created the evil inclination first: pride, self-importance, and other egoistic qualities, relative to which we can check ourselves: How much you can cancel them, sacrifice them in order to take any form that the teacher, studies, and group require from you? If you accept their “pressure,” the Creator fills this new form with the spirit of life. And if not, then not.

When you would like to leave the group, but still decide to stay, then you go toward free choice. The choice means to rise above the evil inclination. Then, you will really feel free.

But now the time has not come yet: Is it possible to let a baby who barely learned to walk choose? He will break something. It is impossible to create a reality of freedom immediately when you have all the qualities opposed to the Creator and you have the opportunity to agree or disagree with Him.

However, today it is not required. Gradually, you realize that you do not have choice for the time being while you are under the dominion of the egoistic desire. Only it acts in you, and you have nothing else, no other force in resisting egoism in something and putting up with it in something else. You still need to go forward, study, and draw a lot of Reforming Light in order to acquire the second force.

In the end, finding yourself between two forces, you obtain the whole world, completely different values, a new understanding. Then, we will talk about free choice.

It is no coincidence that the right to vote is given at 18 and not before. Imagine if 10-year-old children could vote. Then candidates would state from the screen without any constraint: “I will give you candies! I will provide everyone under the age of 18 with the latest generation of smartphones!”

In general, we see that everyday life does not offer a person freedom. And there is no such desire. Today, you do not think that you need choice because you feel you are free. You do not feel that the Creator fully controls you.

And that is why He teaches you: First, He gives you the egoistic desire and then puts obstacles on the path to its realization, as if someone prevents you. You do not understand yet that everything comes from one source, and that is what you are taught.

Question: How can we accelerate this process?

Answer: Through playing with the correct environment, with the group. Replace a vague relationship with the Creator with a real relationship with the group. You can do this. If you want with the help of environment to change how the Creator treats you, you have the opportunity. Instead of the Creator, accept the group as a factor of influence and you can control your life freely.

We hear this, but do not yet feel it. No problem, awareness will come soon…
[92593]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/11/12, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Question: Is it possible to perceive humanity and society as a group once you begin to gradually feel spirituality?

Answer: On the whole, that’s the way it should be. In the future this is what will happen.

When we speak about global humanity, about its integrality, we mean that it is one integral whole. Only from the general whole can we differentiate the 99% of the people who are in the group, but don’t understand why and for what purpose; they came to the group because they were brought there, meaning they were born to this world and are there willy-nilly.

We have to gradually awaken them to participate more actively; this means that actually all of humanity is one group.
[92465]
From the Georgia Convention 11/06/12, Lesson 2

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Question: Sometimes there is a feeling in the group that we all understand and feel a certain phenomenon, but suddenly we feel fogginess in our minds and thoughts, a kind of stupor, and there is the feeling that we develop very slowly. Why is that?

Answer: Why do we constantly forget our goal while in the group, why do we connect and then it all disappears, why do the pictures of the world conceal the real picture in which we should see that everything around us is our desire and that we have to connect in order to discover the Creator in it? Why do we detach ourselves from the true picture of the world and the mirage and imaginary picture that we see conceal spirituality from us? Why is our world stronger than the spiritual world?

It is all because you haven’t focused yourself together with the group on connection.

If you make efforts by yourself, you cannot attain anything by that, you can only succeed when we mutually help one another so that the picture of connection will become a spiritual picture, that it will acquire life, acquire Light in it, and will show us that it is the only true picture of the world.

The external picture that you now see will suddenly lose its intensity and its influence on you and will gradually fade. You would feel that everything that is happening here is like a dream. I drive somewhere, go to sleep, wake up, go to work, go somewhere, all this suddenly begins to fade. You suddenly begin to see that it all stems from your attributes and it stops being so real, clear, and alive and becomes blurry and foggy.

The same picture that is focused on connection, which you imagined before, now becomes real and in it you discover new states. It is this picture that becomes the important one, which means that you begin to feel where the signals are coming from, the Providence, the higher level.

Thus you gradually change one attribute for another.
[92462]
From the Georgia Convention 11/06/12, Lesson 2

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Question: Under what conditions can we see that a group exists and that is headed towards the goal?

Answer: A group that is headed towards the goal is a collection of people for whom there is only one goal. They know what it is, they perceive it among them, and feel it. They study together from Kabbalistic sources; they check themselves according to these sources, and work on the connection of their points in the heart, which means that the main thing for them is the connection as they ignore all the other attributes. If a person yearns for unity in order to reveal the Creator, it is enough for him to be my friend even if he can be an unpleasant person in every other aspect; it makes no difference. Gradually we all understand how to adjust ourselves to one another and to get closer.

A group is a collection of people who understand that in order to attain the Creator they have to work on themselves, to study, and to lead a certain lifestyle. They have to meet on a regular basis and to be so strongly connected that it will constantly lead to connection and unity.

If they just rent a place and gather there, it doesn’t mean that they are a group yet, they meet physically, read together, and then go their own way, does that make them a group? According to the wisdom of Kabbalah everything is determined by the internal awakening and not by the physical bodies.

A group refers to the yearning of the points in the heart to become one whole. Only then it is called a “group.” So we still need to work a lot on this.

But when all the people yearn together for one goal, understanding that only by that will they connect above all the differences, they bring out the Creator’s attribute and by that, overcome the shattering—then they become a group.

So it turns out that all our contrasting attributes are in one egoistic desire. It is as if all the egoistic desires that are opposite from ours, that are in contrast to one another, are now in one sack. We restrict our desires, place a Masach (screen) above these attributes and focus our points at the Creator, at equivalence and bestowal.

It turns out that our connected egoistic desires are left below while our intentions to connect and the yearning for the Creator, to resemble Him and to become equal to Him are above them. This is how the soul, which means the one collective Partzuf is created.

The soul is one. There aren’t many souls. There is only one vessel for everyone. If we create it, we suddenly discover that is has already been created! We only try to discover it and by our attempts we suddenly discover that we already exist in it. This is because that one whole creation already exists while the shattering occurred only with regard to our consciousness. When we yearn to advance we ascend above our current feeling.
[92445]
From the Georgia Convention 11/06/12, Lesson 2

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Question: Suppose people have been playing for a while and in the process of integral study, humanity changes. Sitting somewhere in a cave is a hermit who doesn’t know about that, how can we advance without him?

Answer: It makes no difference. He will feel it. Distance does not matter.

Question: Will he feel it and run to that group?

Answer: He will connect to the world according to his state and his position. He doesn’t have to run anywhere, but can continue to live on a desert island, or in the tundra, or in a cave in the Himalayas, but he will feel that the world is changing according to the changes in him. After all, the Light operates on all of humanity. If there is a critical mass, everyone feels the changes.
[91980]
From KabTV’s “Talks with Michael Laitman,” 10/3/12

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Question: What should we do in the integral group when a harmful person shows up and the moderator has to throw him out? Should we leave such a person in the group?

Answer: We can let him stay only if he can cause useful damage, since above it we can clarify our connection and, our love: “How should we place ourselves against him?” Without an enemy it is very hard to unite, the enemy unites. So on the whole, we have to see and to support such a state of destruction, but to a certain limit.

I think that the group will see the advantage in that and see that it all happens under the influence of nature that intentionally works this way. Just as we have to rise above the inner ego that grows in us, we also have to rise above the growing external ego.

Question: Does this mean that we should educate such people, cope with them and not expel them?

Answer: Not cope with them, love them! Honor them for helping us advance.
[91896]    
From KabTV’s “Talks with Michael Laitman,” 10/3/12.

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Question: When new people join our group, we have a problem of communicating and connecting with them because we already feel different …

Answer: I understand. There is nothing to be done. Newcomers will gradually get closer to you. Do some work together, invite them to various events; it will gradually pass. Only if the group reaches a critical mass, will there not be much difference and newcomers will enter it easily. The group will not feel that it has been joined by additional new people. To do this, it should create a serious critical mass, for example, twenty permanent members of the group. And when it gradually includes newcomers, it won’t be felt much: the new ones can easily hide and the old ones can easily overlook them.
[92512]
From the Georgia Convention 11/06/12, Lesson 2

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