We cannot evaluate each other in any way because there are no true criteria for comparison. Suppose you produce fifty products a day, and I produce only thirty. As a result, your salary is higher than mine, and I, feeling helpless, am angry at you because I measure the two of us by the same standard. At present, we both judge things this way.

We have to understand that every person has their point of the soul, and we have no right to judge others. We only have to help one another so that everyone will fulfill himself in the best possible way. Besides that, there is no other way, attitude, or standard that determines the right mutual connection. I can only evaluate myself and others in bestowal. We will never be equal and right in receiving. Even if both of us feel that we manage to “work well together,” others will start looking at us suspiciously.

The world will never come to good according to the laws of egoism. You can forget about reaching some fair calculation in receiving, which will be perceived as right for more than a moment. A person’s best calculations will never please others.

Therefore, let us not get even with each other according to power, success, brains, feelings, parents, or education. Let us simply disregard this. The world should understand that if we demand people to give each other something or to take something, we will never create anything stable and lasting. Any theory will be refuted.

We must therefore switch to the track of bestowal.
[56709]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World“: That is because by nature, the power to work is not equal with each and every person. One person in the society labors in one hour of work, due to his weakness, much more than his friend who works two hours or more. …Thus, you see that …the labor of the individual on the condition of the evident truth… is completely unfeasible since it cannot be examined and evaluated in any way.

If we are looking for social justice, we cannot rely on work hours because people are different. We cannot measure a person’s efforts objectively either. People’s success doesn’t indicate anything because one is born stupid and another clever, one is lazy and another is energetic, and so on. Heredity isn’t anyone’s fault, but it isn’t anyone’s accomplishment either.

So we cannot judge people according to the measure of truth because it is determined by the root of a person’s soul, his internal attributes that cannot be examined, weighed, or calculated. This means that we cannot complain about or evaluate a person’s productivity fairly. All our attempts to measure efforts and abilities are actually a total lie. We give children grades at school, we compare everyone in the army, we set an arbitrary standard of productivity at work, and all this only corrupts a person’s natural development.

Experts are beginning to understand the problem after having confronted the crisis in education. But the situation hasn’t changed. We simply cannot measure a person correctly according to the measure of truth.
[56715]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/2011, “Peace in the World”

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The economic system is a sort of egoistic imprint of the calculation we make in the “body” of the soul when we prepare it for spiritual action. In economics we aim for maximum profit with minimum investment and risk. These are practical, egoistic calculations where everything is clear.

Even if egoism is repressed formally, it is only because we cannot characterize it qualitatively since it belongs to feelings, to familial connections, to the interests of a country, a nation, and so on. In reality everything can be enumerated and if we were able to do that, we would find ourselves in a precise system, analogous to the one operating in the spiritual world.

Except there, the calculations are made in the “body” of a Partzuf, in the aspiration for bestowal. When you are on the path leading to bestowal, you make a precise calculation, like in an ideal economy: How much do I have to extract from every desire, from every situation, from every factor in this action or maneuver in order to receive the maximum benefit? But obviously, that benefit is selfless.

Here we count on receiving, whereas there—on bestowing, yet the calculation remains. The only question is how to shift from one mode to another. Explaining the final state is also not simple, yet it is characterized by mathematical precision. The current economic disasters are essentially revealing the traits of our egoism which we lacked to conduct the most precise of calculations.

“I love this person. I hate that one. This one is repulsive to me. This one is far from me. This one is close to me. This one is more important in the general system. This one is less important….” How can we take all of these parameters into consideration? And how will every person act individually according to them, renewing his calculations at every second? This will be the real economy which we will have to uphold. In other words, we will have to get to know the correct, healthy system in which egoism works correctly, using two forces.

Today our economic complex is based on just one egoistic component and therefore, without knowing the second half, we cannot manage it. However, when the forces of bestowal join the forces of reception, we will start to interact with the people around us differently, balancing out bestowal and reception in conformity with our own level and the level of society. This will be the real calculation.

We will have to measure and consider our interconnections, which we are unable to do today. We will have to consider all the possible threads extending between us in thoughts and feelings, levels of our closeness and the “bestowal coefficient,” bringing all of this into the economic calculation that will have a purely mathematical character.

If we add the qualitative variables to its parameters, which reflect feelings and the states of humanity as a whole, we will receive a reliable and indisputable result. The same calculation is made in the head of the Partzuf: I consider the inner and surrounding Light, the Reshimot, TANTOT, my inner and outer desires, and methods of working with them…. Precisely this is economics.

Only spiritual calculations are made in the desire and therefore all numbers are precise and authentic. In the desire I can classify factors and give them values, extracting TANTOT from them. In essence, books of Kabbalists are the economics of the universe. Lights are “money,” meaning life, while vessels, desires, and screens allow us to acquire fulfillment, profit. Inner profit is inner Light, and future profit is the surrounding Light. We make mutual loans: For example, the upper one loans to the lower one in the first type of Gadlut. And in the second type of Gadlut the lower one receives Light from the upper one in order to pass it on….

It’s not accidental that the main blow of the crisis affected none other than the economy because it is the most important thing to us. It wasn’t the destruction of the family unit, a collapse of upbringing, or the ecology, but precisely economic problems that have forced us to seriously talk about the crisis. And this corresponds to the spiritual processes.

With time we will begin running a healthy economy, will begin deducing it according to the spiritual system and feeling out the transition to it. This transition will become possible only on the condition that we bring the mutual guarantee component into the calculation, if we measure it, weigh it, and designate it numerically. We will consider it when making calculations on the stock market because otherwise it is impossible. Tomorrow’s success depends on how much the mutual guarantee component grows in our economic formula.
[56665]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/11, Shamati

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Question: Today the crisis has reached all corners of the world and no one sees a solution to it. Why don’t we examine the economic system analogously to our system of upbringing, and offer it to the world?

Answer: We can provide a wonderful description of the economy in the period of the final correction: a balanced society, consumption within the boundaries of reasonable necessity, conservation of nature and man, the sole development of projects that save time and energy and benefit people’s health…. All of this is logical and is easy to put in writing if you are not writing about egoistic gratification, but basic necessity, the harmony between us and nature.

But how can we transition to this stage? How can we explain it to the modern tycoons who are essentially the ones to decide the fate of the world? They manipulate governments which in turn manipulate people. So how can we present this final goal to them? How can we tell them about the phases on the path to it? They will ask: “What will be left for us?” And what will we tell them in response?

“You will receive exactly the same amount as a regular housewife, and your billions will be returned to nature’s needs in order to fix the mess you have made by proliferating excessive consumption in the world. And beyond that you will enjoy internally, spiritually. You will no longer be ‘the top roosters in the pen,’ proudly parading around the perches. You will mature and this will cease giving you pleasure.” You will be fulfilled by the attainment of a higher level.” On the contrary, it will evoke scorn.

Will you be able to explain all of that to a tycoon so he will be enticed by the idea of eternal, perfect life, so he will want to enter the eternity of nature itself, join it, and reveal a higher level of existence in it?… “You will live there like a respectable tycoon. Even when your animate body dies, it is not really you at all. After all, you will become Human in the true, spiritual sense….”

This works only for refined individuals, yet others just might understand it right away. That is why today we are disseminating the force of mutual guarantee to the whole world, and we are not addressing the tycoons, but the people. “It’s worthwhile for us to get closer to one another so life gets better.” And in the meantime, with a view to the future, we inject Light into people, the force of unity. Once they are filled by this force, they begin to understand more and to agree with us, seeing real benefit in the mutual guarantee. That is how they advance.

The path to the heart is not through the mind. You can’t get your mind around this because the mind’s level corresponds to the level of the desire it serves. The mind can never rise above the desire. Deceived by illusions, we might look down on our animate being, but the mind seems like the pinnacle of creation to us. Yet in reality our mind is even lower than the animate desire, being a mere servant of it.

Therefore, the only opportunity we have is to change people’s desires, which can change only under the influence of the Light. This is what we have to provide for them. Your logical conclusions alone won’t help. People will not understand you and will think that you are simply an idiot or a mystic, or in the best case, a great guy dreaming about peace and love on the planet.

There is only one solution: to unite among ourselves and to give people the force of unity. Only this will raise them to a new level of understanding, perception, and agreement with us. Moreover, later, once they agree, they will see that it’s worthwhile for them to follow us because they can’t understand our message fully. By acquiring the force of unity, they will rise to a level where it will become clear that they have to hold on to us, as it is written in the Torah: They will “grab onto your clothes,” meaning the garment, the external vessels, and will say, “Take us there!”

Obviously, you are right in that we do have to talk a little about the economy, upbringing, and the world of the future so as not to push people away at the initial stage. But the most important thing is to transmit the force of unity to them. This is dissemination. In the Introduction to Panim Meirot UMasbirot, Baal HaSulam writes that when the sons of Israel become filled with this force of unity, it will spill from them to everyone else. We have to be ready to receive this force and then it really will spill over to people, who will be receptive to the influence of the Light of Hassadim, giving themselves over to it wholeheartedly.
[56659]
From the lesson on 10/24/11

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1. How will further evolution of the human race take place? How will the crisis and global laws of Nature change our essence? Will the forced transition from egoistic society to an integral model of the world based on mutual guarantee impact only social order or will it also alter the essence and connection between generations?

What kind of world will we end up living in if we manage to connect into one united system that is similar to a living organism? How will our perception of the world’s limitations change?

For that, we have to examine general evolution and its psychological aspect.

2. Protozoan organisms (amoebas), similar to the first simplest creatures on Earth, react to external impacts, but are unable to retain memories or sensations, that is, they do not acquire experience; nor are they able to convey it to future generations.

Comb jellies’ behavior is determined by natural inborn connections; for them, instincts play a tremendous role.

Elementary vertebrates (fish) behave in accordance with hereditary “skills” that were accumulated during their existence. Conservative instincts strictly determine their behavior; they don’t allow them to change their conduct even if it stops being expedient.

3. After exiting water, animals entered a much harsher and diverse environment, and psychological evolution went in two different ways:

• Complication of hereditary “skills” and instincts (insects and Arthropoda).
• Acquisition of the ability to develop vital habits during a life cycle, which allowed making adjustments to a changing environment (development of vertebrates, from amphibian to mammals, gradual suppression of the role of instincts, and enhancement of intellectual functions and rational activities (individual experience).

4. Psychological evolution continues on dry land. Its main point is transitioning from stable hereditary habits to acquired skills that are of non-hereditary nature.

The goal of evolution is a human being; the significance of instincts in human life is minimal. Intellect is what’s important because it allows the fast acquisition of multiple habits and knowledge that, in turn, allows physically weak human beings to adjust to a variety of circumstances.

So, the development of the ability to think as well as the transition from “non-thinking” to “thinking” creatures is a result of a more complicated environment. Man emerged after the environment reached its maximum complexity (after a period of abrupt falls in temperatures). Exclusion of man from the animal world happened as a reaction to more complicated and worsened external surroundings. Man continues to improve both intellectually and psychologically; his evolution is still in progress.

6. Today, we see that the changing environment forces us to adhere to closer interaction with the society. Thus we can assume that the future evolution of human psychology will follow a path of consolidation of human features that will be transferred to generations, but not through genetics as with animal instincts, but rather through “external” social memory.

Future generations are the reincarnations of prior generations; they will receive knowledge that they acquired before through the society that preserves this knowledge in its memory, similar to instincts that are transferred from generation to generation in the animal world.

7. The ability to acquire and pass on the information totally depends on the connection of a person with his or her surrounding society. It becomes a person’s inseparable part and is an everlasting source or storage of skills and information from one generation to the next. Moreover, knowledge will be acquired not through mental efforts, but rather to the degree of one’s connectedness with the environment.

But before mutual unity of a person with his environment is established, it is impossible to ascertain his or her prior properties since they can be socially harmful if not used properly.

Consolidation of habits on the level of instincts can be only applied to bestowal, love of others, a positive attitude to socially beneficial work as an immediate need of every individual, a brotherly mind-set between everybody, meaning that we acquired them through our personal correction during prior incarnations.

8. The process of “instinctive” transfer of knowledge to the next generation will allow them to be morally and intellectually higher than the prior generation. It will determine the essence of a new man through his or her harmonious connection with the society and nature. It will outline the formation of a new type of social environment.

Psychological evolution of the future society will allow it to govern its own nature. Educators’ and teachers’ mission will be among the most important ones: They will be the acting power of the society, and they will be responsible for the creation of a new generation.
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We have to give people an explanation of what the solution to the modern problems is. Even if it won’t be possible to avoid the troubles, people will nevertheless hear us eventually. They won’t have any other choice left.

When the crisis worsens, when factories close down and banks become empty, mass turmoil will begin. The people will rise up with demands, not caring how realistic they are. The government might be able to reasonably justify itself, but the people don’t care about that, and will say, “You’re in power so you’re responsible!”

Moments like that or the breaks between them is precisely when people will hear us. And it will be both the regular people and the powerful ones who will hear. The tycoons will want to build the system of upbringing we are talking about of their own accord in order to pacify the people and raise them above the poverty line. Otherwise people will take away everything from them, as this has already happened in history on several occasions. The danger will force them to take care of the agitations and explanations and to aim people toward mutual unification, to a global, integral system, which nature requires us to create.

After all, this is not someone’s whim, but precisely nature’s call, which we cannot run away from. The more we do in this direction, the less troubles and problems we will have.

Obviously, we won’t start talking about fair distribution right away. The first task is to provide people with whatever amount of money they need to survive. And in response they will be required to make efforts in studying.

When unemployment increases, masses of people will be left with nothing to do. People will have to distribute their time so they will work for half or a third of the work day, and devote the rest of the time to compulsory study. In essence, this will become the real work: A person will work on himself. In order to make bread from wheat, it is necessary to awaken a force that will raise wheat.

This year we will already see how uneasy it is to produce bread in conditions of economic and ecological crisis. And studying, together with efforts to create an environment, is part of our work in this world. We thereby awaken the force in the world that is necessary for our material existence.

A person will study in order to bestow to others, in order to provide their daily bread for them. As Baal HaSulam writes, bestowal to the neighbor and bestowal to the Creator are the same thing. That is how people will reach spirituality—without suffering and without studying the science of Kabbalah.
[56420]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/11, “Peace in the World”

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Question: Our New York group went to Wall Street today to feel the mood and the desires of the demonstrators. What we heard from them was very similar to our message. We sang together our song “Who Wants Change?” How can we convey the idea of mutual guarantee to them?

Answer: There is a lot of work before you now. First you have to build a website and give its address to the protesters. It should be on this site and not on the street that you start a big, true debate about the relevant issues. You should lead people to the virtual court, in which they will discuss the issues related to our message.

The processes in the U.S. are accelerating, and we have to organize the preliminary stages of our work as soon as possible. There is no doubt that we are actually starting to work globally now. Each group will operate at its own pace, according to the local conditions, but in the next few months, we will eventually all be part of this.

As a result, we will understand, feel, and connect to the internal, spiritual system. We already begin to see it as the end result of the process: the ascent to the last degree, the revelation of the Creator to the created beings, the revelation of the attribute of bestowal, the system of bestowal in which we participate in practice. The people perform external actions in it, and we join them with internal actions. It is all before us.
[56232]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, “Peace in the World”

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The situation in the world today already shows us that unification is worthwhile. It is indeed feasible for us to connect and to care about one another. We would benefit if we organized a fair system in which every individual works according to his abilities and gets as much as he or she needs, and not more.

Actually, what can be better than that? It is a very simple and sensible formula. Even children are impressed by this idea. You should see with what joy and enthusiasm they read about it because it is like a fairy tale that they want to come true.

But here several questions arise. First, why aren’t we like that to begin with? Why did nature initially make us corrupt? Second, can we attain this using our own power? And third, why haven’t we done it until now? Didn’t we see the benefit in such a life from the beginning?

Actually, this is exactly how people used to live ages ago. A communist society was the first phase in human civilization. The first humans who climbed down from the trees were communists: They shared everything, and they all lived like one family, each working for its welfare.

However, later the world developed in the opposite direction. We can only long for the blissful, innocent days of the past. Everything was so simple then: Every tribe used to hunt some mammoth and eat it together. No one even imagined cheating anyone else and taking more than his share. People felt that they were a single whole, and this feeling was preserved until the days of ancient Babel.

What happened afterwards? Is it possible to return to the way it used to be? No one agrees to that. On the contrary, our life tends to be totally opposite: We are detached, we isolate ourselves from one another. People get divorced, everyone needs a room of his own, his own place…. And so it follows that we will not be able to return to the same naive altruism. We see that it is against evolution. We can learn this from the sad examples of the Soviet Union and the kibbutzim (collective agricultural communities in Israel).

So what can we do? The global crisis has shown us clearly that we depend on one another and are tied to one another like cogwheels. On the other hand, we hate one another, we can’t stand each another; everybody would like to be all alone in the whole world just so that the others wouldn’t disturb him. How is it possible to combine these two trends?

This is the problem the world is facing today. Discount rate manipulations will not suffice. The economy reflects the connection between us. So how can we direct it towards mutual cooperation?

We see, for example, that Germany is bailing out Greece only because at the moment it is cheaper than throwing the Greeks to the wolves. This is how the Creator plays with us, until we abandon all the old methods and find a true solution.
[56229]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Question: Man got used to exploiting the environment for his own benefit. Even when we speak about social justice, many see it as an opportunity to grab something for themselves.…

Answer: Therefore, education must come before anything else, as the first necessary condition. Man needs to be brought up differently and should be taught about the system we live in.

For instance, we are familiar with the realities of our world. I know what a bank is, what work is, what a medical clinic is; I know about pension funds, social security, roads, traffic lights, police, and the government. But a baby doesn’t know all that yet, and so we teach him how to live in this world.

In exact same manner we now have to teach humanity how to live in the new, integral world. The egoistic mechanisms will gradually stop working. We will soon see that the power of receiving doesn’t lead to anything. We see that even people who have a lot of money don’t know what will happen with the economy in the near future. Soon they will find out that they have a lot of power, but they can’t do anything. Everything disappears, everything is lost, everything breaks down, falls apart, and stops working. No system will work except for the system of bestowal, which we will have to establish.

Question: This may happen in a year or two, but I have problems now….

Answer: So start acting now. Do you want to have a good life? Pay for it with bestowal upon others. This is your work, which is called “the Creator’s work.” We are about to see a world in which we will not be able to provide for ourselves by using the power of egoism, but only by the power of bestowal. If you bestow upon others, upon society, you will be able to receive food, clothing, and other necessities from society. But it won’t happen if you don’t bestow. This is because the new world is dominated by the altruistic power.

Question: How will people shift to the new paradigm?

Answer: By the blows. It was Pharaoh who brought the children of Israel to the Creator. Haman caused the Jews to finally escape the Babylonian exile and return to the Land of Israel, and the King supported him. It is impossible to advance if the ego isn’t revealed to us as the evil force, as our enemy.

Eventually, nature’s blows and the positive influence from our part, circulation, will bring about the change. People cannot change instantly and agree with us. Their desire is opposite to bestowal. The principle of “love thy neighbor” seems childish to them. They don’t understand yet that it the basis for everything, that it is the correction of the soul. The evil of their egoism hasn’t been revealed to them yet.

They will be able to feel it after many blows, until Pharaoh will finally admit: “I’m sinful, and the Creator is righteous.” He didn’t think so before. But then you will realize that everything is because of you, because you are corrupted, not the surrounding nature, or a neighbor, or anybody else. Then you will feel the need for correction, and it will come. In your search for a method, you will find us and ask us to teach you.

But we don’t want you to suffer and so we disseminate the method in advance, although it spurs hatred in you. This is how we help the world.
[56040]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/28/2011, “The Nation”

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I don’t understand people who go out to the streets and demand to be given something. Why do they deserve it? If it were my child, it would be different. But I didn’t give birth to you, so why should I take care of you?

Even if I were a tycoon, so what? I made my money, so why do you come to me? What is unjust here? What is illegal here? Why do you demand something from me? Why do I have to feel ashamed of what I have earned, of my social status?

Let’s take an athlete for example, who worked out in the gym for twenty years and has lifted tons of weights. Now he has muscles like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he is proud of it. Suddenly some demonstrators come to him and demand to “take off” some of his muscles. How would he see that?

So if a tycoon has worked hard and has earned his wealth, he also has his own “muscles,” but they are expressed in his bank account. What right do you have to put your hand on it?

Another example: A musician has practiced for years, fifteen hours a day. Does he have to give up what he has achieved for you?

So why do we look at a rich man differently? Hasn’t he worked as hard as the athlete or the musician? And even if he has it as a result of his father’s efforts, so what? If you think that there is social injustice here—go and change society, do something. But it is wrong to just come and demand. And besides, if you destroy the tycoons, you will destroy society. Who will provide people with jobs? Who will enable them to make a living?

As long as the world is egotistic, we cannot change it for the better. We have seen it in Russia. Instead of correcting things, we will only create a bigger lie and new ways of stealing. In an egotistic society, every organization and every individual operate according to their own interests, and there is nothing we can do. We cannot build a more just society than the present one on the basis of the same desires, the same egoistic “fuel.”

There is no other choice but to change the engine.
[56036]
From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/28/2011, “The Nation”

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