Question: Since the convention, I have developed a feeling that now we must concentrate on the morning lesson, on unity? Or should we do more dissemination? Something became unclear, it seems that everything we did until now is not enough; we need to add something else.

Answer: Everything we now add must be done at the morning lesson! It is impossible to continue advancing without the morning lesson! There is no movement without it! The morning lesson is everything—alpha and omega—there is nothing else to say.

But besides the morning lesson, everything else that we do must be done in the spirit of integration, which we constantly awaken at the morning lesson.

The main thing is to start the day with the lesson. Even if for some reason you were unable to do it, you still need to start your day with the lesson regardless of the time when you wake up: Dedicate at least half an hour to the lesson, otherwise, the entire day is a descent, a loss, and you will spend a very long time paying for it.
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From the Virtual Lesson 2/26/12

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Question: You said that in the next few days, rather than to engage in dissemination, it is desirable for us to scrutinize the inner point so as to strengthen unity….

Answer: I believe that you should constantly, all your free time, review the materials on mutual guarantee, unity, mutuality, and integrality. Perhaps it’s better to use the processed rather than the original version because the originals are written in a special language that distracts us from experiencing this material in life directly. Maybe you should simply watch the convention one more time.

You should live by this and go through this again and again in order to form the strongest possible Reshimo, meaning memories, feelings, and work with these sensations. You will suddenly discover that we talked about the things that may have slipped your attention there, or you might have heard them in a different context, in a different perspective. You should go over what happened to you there, and do it several times.

I have witnessed many times that people hear very selectively. God help you to get something out of the information that I have put into it, not secretly inside my words, but clearly, verbally. In reality, people don’t catch more than 10-15 percent of what they hear. I personally went every day at least twice over any lesson with Rabash (any lesson! I don’t even mention our conventions), besides the fact that I attended it.

I also made a plan: Why he explains in that particular way, where the beginning and the end are, how he begins a question, how he finishes it, how he proceeds from the beginning to the end, develops a topic, gives additional questions, or sets some unclear tasks in the middle. I tried to “enter” his head, penetrate his approach. As a result, it turned out that due to this mechanical work I began to feel him, started to sense better.

It is necessary. This is what I meant by saying that for now you shouldn’t do anything else. It is you, those who experienced the convention and were inside, who now have to absorb it well.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 2/26/12

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The Book of Zohar is the main tool that enables us to exit this world into the upper world. We should expect and hope that this will happen any moment.

The Zohar operates like a special mechanism. We can be ready to enter spirituality, but unable to draw the Light upon ourselves. Or we may seemingly draw the Light, but not be ready for it. This book is a system that creates the correspondence between the group, in which we first hate one another and then connect. But this also takes place only under the influence of the Light. Even to feel hatred, we need to sit together in front of the book.

If the Light didn’t influence us, we wouldn’t feel such hate towards one another. But when the Light is first revealed, we suddenly understand how deeply we hate one another. And as a result of working on ourselves and using the Light correctly, we turn the hate into love and connection, and then we discover what is written in the book.

To study the Torah means to discover all this hate and our inability to connect, our helplessness, and, in the beginning, even a lack of desire. We should discover all the stages, all the attributes, and then change them and find out for what we should yearn. All this is done only with the help of the book.

It doesn’t mean that we have to learn the text by heart and to know what is written there. The degrees should connect correctly into one ladder so that AHP of the upper one will sink into GE of the lower one, and the connection between them will open up the route for the requests that rise upward and for the filling that descends from Above, which is the route to the upper force. All this is done by a system called “a book”: with the help of a book, a writer, and a story.

Those who read the book together and want to attain something must feel that they are equal. The sages of the Talmud made the study easier for us, and now in order to succeed we don’t need any corporeal restrictions, as it says: “Live on bread and water, sleep on the ground, and feel lucky.” Instead, they prepared this study for us by which we draw the Light that Reforms.

They have inserted into their books an influence upon us that brings us closer to the “pillar” by which it is customary to pray. This is the special, middle line that connects and balances the forces of receiving in us and the forces of bestowal that we want to acquire, by connecting all this to our request.

They managed to make things easier for us by building the system by their souls, to complete the initial spiritual system of the forefathers. And now we can connect to them through our teachers: Rabash, Baal HaSulam, and all the other Kabbalists throughout the ages, until we attain the sages of the Talmud and then the forefathers. Thus we will connect to the spiritual “pillar.”

The Book of Zohar enables us to connect to the space organized into a line (Kav). But in order to receive from this line, we have to build a circle. Part 2 of The Study of the Ten Sefirot is dedicated to this topic and tells us how the upper Providence passes from the circles to the line, and from the line it is possible to connect to the circles.

If we want to join the line of the great Kabbalists of the past, there is no other way but to form circles. It’s just like a baby who is in his mother’s arms. A mother treats him like a line: carefully and thoughtfully, by knowing exactly what happens to him. While the baby totally annuls himself and exists “in circles,” unable to appreciate her actions or differentiate that something is coming from above or from below. And this allows them to connect.

We have to act in the same way. This is possible only if we mutually annul ourselves in the group and organize the group correctly, as per instructions of Rabash. Then through the book, the system of the line that was formed by the great Kabbalists who pass the spiritual energy on to us, we will be able to receive this force, even if we don’t know how it operates. Let the upper Light do its job, and we will see the result.

We’ll see it in the same way a growing child feels the result of his development, not knowing where it comes from and how he develops. All that is required from him is the desire to grow up. We too have to demand only the right desire, meaning to constantly yearn for greater connection. This will indicate that we have annulled ourselves before the upper one and that we’ve connected to the line.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/2012, The Zohar

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Over the course of the many years that I’ve been explaining the method of integral cooperation, I give the example of our physical body, which is made up of different organs. All the organs seem to operate on their own: the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, or the liver. Each operates at its own pace and order and in each there is an internal program, a software, but everything is based on cooperation.

Although they all operate on different planes, at a different pace, with totally different internal tasks, they should all have one collective task: to keep the whole body in a balanced state, which depends only on the right cooperation of each corrected part. A corrected part is the part that cooperates with all the others, and its internal work is aimed only at agreement with all the other parts of the body.

We, too, should each feel ourselves as small organs in one big body. The creation of our collective vessel of perception, of a new sensory organ, depends on the fact that no one operates as a separate body, but in agreement with all the other parts of the system.

So everything should be directed not at our individual internal development, which actually doesn’t exist, but only at connection!

There are still many people who come to us and study from the books, but only in order to know, to see what is written there. But they are not included in the general work of connection and unity, and so they don’t understand where all this is headed. “Oh well, it’s a science, a theory, that speaks about exchanging places and movements in some imaginary space, upwards and downwards, about different connections between some kind of unfamiliar objects. Where are they? It is all rather abstract because in our world all this doesn’t exist. So what should I do with this?”

These people don’t understand that they have to connect between themselves, and only in the connection between them will they begin to see through these ties: “Where are these parts? Where is this level of Bina, the giving, the receiving, the restriction of the desire, the rising above the desire in the connection with others, receiving from them and bestowing upon them?” Until they try to implement all this in the connection between them, the wisdom of Kabbalah will be an empty philosophy for them, which doesn’t say anything.

So the main thing is not to study what is in the books, but to yearn to feel what we study, to implement it in our life, in the connection between us. Otherwise, like our teachers tell us, a person “dries up.” He simply doesn’t see the results of what he reads. Of course, there are many interesting things there, lots of information, but it is just some abstract study and nothing more than that.

While the method itself is very practical, and we have to implement it between us.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 1

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Question: When starting to teach an integral training course, do I need to keep the image of a scientist or someone else? Or does it depend on an individual?

Answer: You have to be like a mixed genre artist, like an actor who transforms into thousands of different characters. In other words, I can simultaneously joke and touch everyone to tears as I draw examples from science, technology, art, culture, and music. And everyone experiences this together over the hours of our communication.

We “cook” so much together in our common feelings, thoughts, and emotions, ascents and descents, that at the end we turn into a “salad,” and we live it. Every person feels that he begins to sense everyone else against his will and that thoughts and feelings are simply shared: Everyone understands everything.

Comment: The atmosphere in modern schools and universities is such that people are very dry. They choose a style and are unable to go beyond it.

Answer: I also often use this, depending on what I am speaking about. If I want to for the material that I am teaching to be perceived as education instead of upbringing, something like physics of the new world, a new society, then at first I emphasize evolution, successive development of events, and history, using all the scientific data at my disposal. This is the only way for me to make my listeners respect and trust the facts I am giving them. Surely, in this case I behave as a scientist, an authority.

On the other hand, when I begin to speak with them about certain spiritual specifics, I either act as a psychologist or a sympathizer. We constantly switch roles.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #11, 12/16/11

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The Babylonian Talmud, Treatise Taanit 7: He who engages in the Torah for its sake, the Torah becomes the potion of life for him, and he who engages in the Torah not for its sake, it becomes the potion of death for him.

If there is such great danger concealed in the Torah, perhaps it’s better not to engage in it? After all, if you study correctly, you “rise to heaven,” and if you don’t, “you sink into the ground,” into the abyss.

The problem is that if you don’t study correctly, the Light concealed in the Torah puts you into states that are opposite from the truth, but you don’t even notice that. The Torah doesn’t bring you death, but rather “the potion of death,” when you don’t feel that you are dead. You can study the Torah day and night, memorize page after page by heart, and at the same time be dead, meaning not understand that this is totally opposite from the goal for which the Torah was given.

The Torah was given to us so that we will reach the love of others. It says: “I created the evil inclination, and I created the Torah as a spice because the Light in it reforms.” What does it mean that it reforms? It’s the “great law of the Torah”—”love thy friend as thyself,” or in other words, the general goal of everything that we do according to the Torah.

In every precept we perform, in every detail, we must advance towards the love of others. Only through the love of others will we reach the final goal, the love of the Creator and adhesion with Him, according to the equivalence of form between a person and the Creator.

Therefore, before the study, we have to prepare ourselves and keep all the necessary conditions so that the study of the Torah will bring us the desired goal: adhesion, that is, the correction of our intentions from egoistic to altruistic. This work is clarified only in the group, where we can check ourselves practically.

Each time we will discover hate among us and will get a chance to rise above it towards love. To do that, we need to organize ourselves correctly: We want to connect in order to reach adhesion and to discover the Creator in it, thereby bringing Him contentment. It’s possible to discover the Creator only in our collective vessel of bestowal. It’s necessary that we prepare ourselves for the lesson in this way so that we’ll approach the study correctly.

Question: If the potion of death doesn’t let me feel that I am dead, does the potion of life enable me to feel death?

Answer: I feel that I am living from the “potion.” It isn’t an ordinary existence anymore. In the intention of in order to bestow, above my nature, I attain life. The potion has the effect of making me lie to my egoistic desire and not to myself. On the other hand, the potion of death drowns me in the lie, which I don’t notice, and then I see myself as “righteous,” although I haven’t even entered the rank of “wicked.”

Question: How can the wisdom of Kabbalah save a person from the potion of death?

Answer: It can do it by the Light that Reforms. If you arrange all the conditions for yourself correctly, if you enter the group and disseminate, which is an inseparable part of the preparation these days, and if you participate in everything that the group experiences in order to reveal the connection, then you are preparing correctly for the study, and your intention during the study is not to read yet another paragraph, but to receive the Light that Reforms. It isn’t by chance that Baal HaSulam wrote in “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 18: “…that while practicing Torah, they did not set their minds and hearts to draw the Light in the Torah….”

Everything is solved by the preparation. The right study is the study that you have prepared yourself for correctly. Then you read the text correctly, with the right intention, in the right group, with all the necessary conditions. And what do you get from the study? You get the chance to work and to rise: the feeling of hate and rejection of the friends….
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/13/2012, “Introduction to TES”

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In the News (form EurekAlert): “Mitsch, an environment and natural resources professor at Ohio State University, has led the effort to compare the behavior of two experimental marshes on campus – one that was planted in 1994 with wetland vegetation and another that was left to colonize plant and animal life on its own.

“The two wetlands now contain nearly the same number of plant species, and almost 100 more species than existed 15 years ago. When the two marshes were created, researchers planted 13 common wetland species in one marsh and left the other to develop naturally. Water from the nearby Olentangy River has been continually pumped into both marshes at rates designed to mimic water flow in a freshwater river wetland setting.”

My Comment: All this suggests that the initial conditions are not important: The main thing is to allow wetlands to develop naturally. We have the opportunity to return to nature: If we leave it alone, limit ourselves to the necessities of life, in a few years, we will find ourselves in a healthy world again.
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Question: What can a person do while reading The Book of Zohar in order to stay in contact with the group throughout the day?

Answer: You receive some medicine in the morning, an injection. Suppose I have high blood pressure. I take a pill in the morning so that I will feel good the entire day. The pill does its job because it works on the same level: the still, the vegetative, and the animate.

On the other hand, our spiritual development depends on our efforts. My healing depends on my participation. Why? It is because thanks to the healing, from the animate level I attain the level of man.

So, it isn’t enough to get a “pill” in the morning, for example, half an hour before reading The Book of Zohar, when I am very enthusiastic and moved to tears by the strong emotions. It isn’t enough. I have to organize a daily schedule so that I will be under this influence all the other 23.5 hours.

In our world, the pill has an effect on me for 23.5 hours if I suck on it for half an hour. Gradually, as the digestive juices are extracted, the pill releases all the substances it contains so that they are absorbed by the body for several hours.

We have to do the same. However, a person cannot do that because he is constantly on his level, while here, he has to be between two. Two levels, as it says in The Zohar, are the letters of the upper “Hey” and the lower “Hey.” The upper “Hey” is Bina that operates on me, and I am Malchut, the lower “Hey.” What should be between us? It is the Creator.

So, I have to place the Creator before me, which means that all the awakenings that my Malchut feels, my desire, as a result of receiving half an hour of “infusion,” all its potential preparation for correction, all must be revealed practically during the 23.5 hours. I have to assist it by trying not to detach myself from the goal of “Israel (one who yearns for the Creator), the Torah (the Light that Reforms), and the Creator are one.” For that, I received the injection.

Of course, I can only do it with the help of the group where we are in one thought and thus influence one another. There is no other choice. A person cannot do it by himself. Even if he writes himself a thousand memos and puts them everywhere, he won’t see them. Even if he takes a servant to remind him, he won’t hear him.

It is possible only in the form that is above him, when the force that obliges him to hear, that is, to establish a connection between the two letters of “Hey,” comes to him. You can do that only in the group.

Therefore, mutual guarantee is expressed when you are in this activity, in absorbing the medicine that is already within you. If you swallow it and don’t use it, it is as if you received poison from a snake because every medicine is poison. It isn’t by chance that the symbol of medicine is a snake coiling around a cup of poison.

If you don’t use this means correctly, it becomes the potion of death. Then you will discover it through suffering and not by the Light. This is mechanics, and it must operate this way. There is nothing but the laws of nature here.

This is the root of all the mistakes people make throughout their lives and throughout human history. You could write entire novels about it, but humanity already has no time to read them….
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/8/2012, The Zohar

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Opinion (Nikolas Busse, Brussels Correspondent for NATO and the EU): “Perhaps the scariest side effect of the euro crisis is the renaissance of national prejudice. The Germans are called the Nazis again, while southern EU members are considered lazy and crooks. Some phrases are reminiscent of the rhetoric of the period before WWI and between the world wars. Rough expressions are evidence of the EU’s decline.

“European unity is broken by its goal – to reconcile peoples, who throughout history were used to looking at each other with hostility, distrust and envy. Despite the existence of the internal market and freedom of movement, EU citizens are strangers to each other and live in accordance with national mentality.

“During the crisis, the Europeans are turning to the past: Europe has not forgotten the Third Reich, for there will always be a certain skepticism in relation to Germany. The EU has a future only if all member states stay together.”

My Comment: That is why the method of integral education and upbringing highlights the need to educate all the participants of the integration processes in advance and to proceed to the creation of the integral community only as people’s thinking changes.
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Opinion (Sergey Gubanov, professor at the Moscow State University): “One of the main problems in Russia today is unemployment. There are plenty of young graduates, but not everyone can get a job in their field. The social crisis is growing; there is a wide gap between the availability of jobs and the number of specialists. This contradiction is disastrous for the country because we are releasing an army of protest. Some economists believe that the unemployment problem can be solved by small and medium enterprises. This opinion is erroneous. The social crisis can be overcome only by large corporations. This happens in developed countries, for example, with the help of the famous Microsoft. Imagine how many personnel are involved in this system! Unfortunately, there are just five neo-industrial countries in the world now. The rest are their customers.”

My Comment: The numbers of the employed will decrease until it reaches the level sufficient to support the society at a reasonable level of consumption. All the sources of employment, except the necessary ones, will disappear. We need to develop a system of education and upbringing that will be perceived by society as work because being in this system, a person brings the world into balance, and this is the most productive human work there is.
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