Question: Why does Baal HaSulam hardly mention the group in his articles?

Answer: There is hardly anything to say about the group since it is an obvious condition. If you don’t work on the connection with the group, you don’t have a spiritual vessel.

So Baal HaSulam has only several articles about the group. A Kabbalistic group is a concept known since the days of Abraham, who was the first Kabbalist who had to work in a group. Before him, there was no need for that since the idea of the connection of the souls was not revealed. The souls were so pure until then that they didn’t need to connect to one another in order to connect to spirituality.

Although we know the history of Cain and Abel, this connection is still on the level of the roots of the evil inclination. So, Abraham was the first who needed a group although he had already attained spirituality.

He was the first link in a chain of twenty generations from Adam Ha Rishon (the First Man) until Noah, and from Noah until Abraham (ten Sefirot of the Direct Light and ten Sefirot of the Reflected Light). He was the first who started to organize a group, and so he is considered the father of the nation of Israel. This nation is a Kabbalistic group.

The concept of the group was then formed, and it is impossible to reveal spirituality without it. The more we advance, the bigger the groups become. First, the groups were only a teacher and a student, as it says: “The minimum of many is two.”

There were different stories throughout the time periods in history, but the end result is they are all eventually meant to be as one. During the events before Mt Sinai, when Egypt’s desire to receive was revealed, the unity of the group of the whole Israeli nation as one group was crucial. The conditions of the gathering before Mt Sinai were the conditions of a Kabbalistic group: To be “as one man with one heart,” “each man shall help his friend,” “don’t do unto others what is hateful to you,” “love thy friend as thyself,” and “all of Israel are friends,” connected in mutual guarantee.

These are the conditions for the existence of the group because the “nation of Israel” is a Kabbalistic group.
[106248]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/28/13, Shamati #25

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Question: I know that you dealt with homeopathy. I know some of your patients who were really cured. Why did you choose homeopathy from all the other methods?

Answer: Homeopathy didn’t stand in my way of doing what is really important. Besides, it’s a method by which you can help people, even after one session.

Question: It’s interesting that when we speak about the placebo effect, most people attribute homeopathy to this category. They say that it’s about pills that don’t really contain any active substances.

Answer: Indeed, there are no chemical substances in them since it’s above the Avogadro constant. In homeopathic medicine, there is the power of the matter of which it is comprised. This means that it’s a real power that stands behind the matter and which, in the meantime, we can’t define.

Here there are many such fields which we can’t define. When a person stares at my back, for example, I feel his stare. But what is the power that is focused on me? Where does it stem from, from his eyes? There are many such phenomena in the world.

If we use homeopathy correctly, it’s very influential. In fact, in our days when the body is polluted by chemicals, it’s a much different situation than it was at the beginning of homeopathy. In the past, people used to get three to five potencies and that was enough to have an effect on a person. Today, however, potencies that are a thousand times greater don’t have any effect on a person.

Homeopathy is a very complex science. I think that it is more complex than all the other medical sciences since it’s also individual. Of course it isn’t allopathic (a phenomenon that is attributed to the overpowering effect of one organism over another by the extraction of chemical substances). It depends on a person’s habitat, the environment he lives in, on his race, and his nationality. In fact, all this should be studied with regards to his soul.

Question: In order to choose a specific homeopathic medication for a person, a practitioner should rely not only on a certain symptom, like earaches for example, but also on the patients psychology in general?

Answer: Yes, his inner spiritual component is taken into account, as it shows what a person has contracted and how it can be neutralized. Primitive homeopathy of the allopathic type cures the patient on the basis of external symptoms, but the real cure is fulfilled only on the basis of a person’s inner world.
[105939]
From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

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Question: Half a century ago in Pennsylvania, there was a small village in which people actually didn’t get sick. Doctors found this very intriguing and studied this phenomenon for twenty years. During this time everything changed: People started to get sick, the hospitals were filled, and then more doctors were needed.

The researchers reached a very interesting conclusion. It turned out that the small village was founded by Italian settlers who lived under the same roof and helped one another for four or five generations, respecting family ties. The moment they began to live separately, they started to get sick.

But now it’s the time of a generation that doesn’t know what it means to live in a big family. So the very notion of family has been so distorted, that, now, we can’t even imagine what it means to dine together with the whole family.

Answer: By the way, a compulsory family meal is one of our recommendations. It may not even be a family, but a community meal.

In the past, religions conducted extensive social work. A person used to come to the house of prayer, he heard a sermon, met other people, and talked to them.

All this was necessary even in the times when our ego was on a rather primitive level compared to today’s, when there was not the mutual rejection we feel today. Today, the mutual rejection is already an illness that has to be cured. Back then, the illness didn’t have to be cured but only needed preventive treatment. Now, however, we have to cure it. We have to reinstate the actions aimed at connection. They can’t be related to religion or to some other events anymore; it has to be serious workshops of integral education.
[105942]
From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

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In the News (from Notre Dame News): “According to a new study from the University of Notre Dame, a particular style of thinking that makes people vulnerable to depression actually can be ‘contagious’ to others and increase their symptoms of depression six months later. …

“’Our findings suggest that it may be possible to use an individual’s social environment as part of the intervention process, either as a supplement to existing cognitive interventions or possibly as a stand-alone intervention,’ according to Notre Dame Psychology Professor Gerald Haeffel.

“’Our study demonstrates that cognitive vulnerability has the potential to wax and wane over time depending on the social context, which means that cognitive vulnerability should be thought of as plastic rather than immutable.’”

My Comment: Moreover, it is transmitted like all our other impacts to the environment and then back, from the environment to us, in the form of “viral” waves, influences, that we do not feel. Since we are all connected to the network of universal connection between ourselves as well as to the entire still, vegetative, and animate world, we catch this “virus” and, conversely it catches our emotional state.

This is seen most clearly in the relationship between pets and their owners: Animals are at risk of getting the same illnesses, especially depression. The study confirms again that a person can feel happiness only in a “healthy” society, which means that it depends only on our relationship and mutual desire for happiness.
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Question: Throughout the process of human development, various types of medicine have appeared: for example, 3000 years old Chinese medicine—acupuncture, reflexology, herbal medicine, and so forth. Ayurveda is 3500 years old—aromatherapy, yoga, and the Chakra system. The Jewish people have existed more than 5000 years. What is their contribution to the development of health?

Answer: It is the wisdom of Kabbalah. It maintains a person’s balance with nature. And there are no drugs, massages, needles, candles, or fragrances. I’m not belittling anything, but simply saying that they have a secondary mechanical impact, although there is also a psychological significance in this.

It is known that, in Talmudic medicine, all kinds of biological substances are used. But true Jewish medicine in itself is just an inner preparation directed towards the balance of the human being within us, not towards the beast, but specifically the human within us, towards the balance of my ego with nature, its correction. Kabbalah says that every time I discover the ego within me, I must be in an inner movement to balance it, meaning to correct it.

It goes up and down like a buoy on the water, and I am concerned all the time about correcting it. And, in this manner, I reach an ideal, absolute health.

But this involves an entire system of educational work which the ancient Jews conducted through extensive education and upbringing. There was never anyone among them who didn’t know how to read and write or wasn’t familiar with the system of his organism, the system of the world around him, his interaction with society and the surrounding world. All the laws described in the Talmud and in other ancient books were accepted afterwards throughout the world through the Greeks and Romans. All of these are the external manifestations of what was practiced among the Jews.

But I stress again that all of medicine is built on the balance of my egoistic “self” with altruistic nature, which is to say, on the inner correction of my “Self.”

Therefore, “love your neighbor as yourself” is the essential law of physical, spiritual, external, and internal health.
[106061]
From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

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Question: Can we expect to cross the Machsom at the New Jersey convention May 10^th – 12^th?

Answer: If you know exactly what it means to cross the Machsom and you want to do it, then you will surely succeed. To cross the Machsom means to enter into the group and to be born into the spiritual world.

In order to be born, the point in the heart, the drop of spiritual semen, has to be moved upward and turned into a “white drop,” the embryo of your soul that belongs to the Light. Through it you will feel spirituality and in it you will feel self-annulment: first, in regard to the group; next, in regard to the attribute of bestowal; and then, in regard to the Creator. This will be the first feeling of the spiritual world: self-annulment.

Then, from this drop of spiritual semen, the embryo will begin to develop and more and more ego will be added to one’s self-annulment, which you will correct and turn into a matter for connection to the group. Then you will build your vessel, meaning the spiritual body, and will continue to move your entire ego to the other side, beyond the Machsom.
[105806]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/23/13, Writings of Rabash

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Question: We say that we want to correct a person. What part within us is called a human being?

Answer: If we separate man’s three main physical needs that are related to the physical (animal) body—food, sex, and family—then the fulfillment of these desires is the satisfaction of normal animal needs. The next level of desires—wealth, power, fame, and knowledge—belongs to human aspirations, and you have to fulfill them only in accordance with the social environment that surrounds you.

You can satisfy your animal desires in the family, regardless of where you live: on a farm, in a small village, or on an uninhabited island. You have a family, a wife and children; you have enough food and live in peace. If your desires are greater than food, home, and family, then you cannot live on an uninhabited island. You want to be in Manhattan because only there do you have the opportunity to realize your aspiration for wealth, power, fame, and knowledge.

Question: However, what would be wrong if I were a famous doctor and earned a hundred times more than others?

Answer: If you are in your animal state on a separate island, in balance with the environment and consuming as much as you need, you do not harm nature. You eat and reproduce, and everything is fine.

However, in Manhattan, with desires for wealth, power, and knowledge, you too must be in balance with the material nature that surrounds you. You find yourself in a new “jungle,” but are you in balance with it? The question arises: What is “balance” in today’s society, not somewhere on an island or in a village, but in Manhattan?

This means that you give as much as you receive. This is the basic law of nature, the law of equilibrium.

This law also applies to our bodies. All that exists—the still, vegetative, and animate nature—aspires toward equilibrium. And if balance suddenly disappears, this is a temporary condition, an illness, like in our body, when there is a difference between various internal parameters.

The question is whether all of it is established correctly. If we consider our natural internal system, then we can measure the health of society as the health of the body. According to this system, you can learn how we should behave in the environment, that is, with our own kind.

The fact is that wolves, bears, or tigers do not destroy the environment. They take as much as they need for food and no more. Being in dis-balance with nature, we destroy it and thus we destroy ourselves.

Imagine if a healthy bear killed all the rabbits with his paws. What would he do tomorrow? He would die from hunger. Thus, nature instinctively creates in animals a protective reflex, and a well-fed bear wants nothing more. He can play with these other bunnies.

A hunter’s instinct awakens in it only with the sensation of hunger. The bear is not an enemy to someone whom it kills; it does not do it to dominate others. It does not yearn for power as it is usually shown in cartoons. It is absolutely not true! The bear views other animals as a source of energy and nothing more.

However, the human being sees in the other person an object whom he can dominate. As much as I humiliate him, to that extent, I feel better. I am willing to subjugate the entire world and I want that. I want to know more than anyone else, to have more influence than anyone else, so that everyone bows to me, so that I am the richest. I want my “Self” to exist. All the rest are just tiny insects, crawling around me.

Of course, a person cannot be blamed for this because nature develops all these desires within us. For what purpose does it develop them?

Even if we don’t know why, we at least need to understand the cause of all our suffering. This is only in the fact that we must come into balance with each other. Any unbalanced state brings about big problems, and they lead us to destruction.
[105698]
From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

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Question: The great thinker and physician Rambam brought a set of postulates, one of which reads: “To live healthy is a spiritual necessity.” Could you comment on that?

Answer: Our health is one of the conditions of general equilibrium between man and nature, of the balance of the person himself and his adhesion with the Creator. That is why the balance on all the levels—mental, moral, physical, ethical, spiritual, and physiological—is one and the same system of complete equilibrium. There is no doubt that a person who, in the future—together with the entire world—will reach complete correction, will receive from all the sides only positive feedback, and this overall balance will make him absolutely healthy.

We can talk about eternity, infinity, and eternal life, but all this is not for us at the moment. We do not understand all those beautiful changes that may occur in a person since, according to our current notions, the material body cannot exist forever. But that’s not the point.

The fact is that this is possible only when the human being will be included in the general system, when all the people in the world will be interconnected correctly, will mutually complement and balance one another to such an extent that everyone’s health will be determined by the correct health of everyone else.

Question: When Rambam says that physical health is a spiritual necessity, what is meant by the word “spiritual”?

Answer: The world spiritual means the future spiritual state of a person, when he ascends above his animal part and begins to make his spiritual part healthier, the part which, at the moment, is not felt by anyone but Kabbalists. Every person has it in some kind of internal latent, embryonic state, similar to how a small child potentially incorporates his future child; that is, a person’s spiritual part is not manifested in any way.
[106151]
From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

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Question: What can motivate a doctor to change? It is clear for a patient that he wants to become healthy, but for a doctor? How can a doctor and a patient be encouraged to become closer to each other?

Answer: I was born and grew up in a family of doctors. My mother is a gynecologist, my father was a dentist, and my aunt and uncle were also doctors. If suddenly someone fell ill, at once there were a phonendoscope, medications; everyone knew what to do, you got treatment, and everything was fine, no problems. In this regard, the entire Department of Health was at my home.

The same feeling of one family should be between doctors and patients; otherwise, there is no trust towards a doctor. But today, a doctor cannot afford this. No matter how many gifts you give him, he is still swamped by patients.

So, it must be a completely different system, with the emphasis not on medications but on the attention to a person, as in ancient Chinese medicine.

That is, the health care system should include the entire life of a person. This is a technology of life: How you are born, what you breathe, what you eat, the impact of your environment, how your body reacts to all this (like a biological system to the surrounding system), and how you live your life—getting married, giving birth, getting old, and dying.

But all this should be viewed as a system that is in equilibrium with nature. And for this, a person has to be organically, integrally connected to nature, to abide by its laws, understanding what it required of him, and how he has to attune himself to a mutual interconnection.

Just as harmony and balance within us means the health of the body, the balance in nature means the health of the environment, so there should be homeostasis between us and the surrounding environment. We disrupt the balance of nature, upset the balance within ourselves, but most importantly, this disturbs the balance between us and the environment. Here, we do not correspond to it at all.

It is known that the surrounding nature acts according to the law of self-stabilization: You give as much as you receive. Thus, homeostasis is sustained and balance is preserved. But we are in absolute disparity with nature because we savagely consume all of it and give nothing in return, just pollute it.

It all depends on a person’s education, on his environmental education in the first place. But we call this integral education because, in order to change human attitude toward nature and society, it is necessary to change a human being himself.

We live in a society that constantly affects us in a negative way, and we do the same, being driven by our egoism: To consume, to suppress the other, to earn as much as possible—or better yet steal—without giving anything in return. Thus we have to correct both a human being and the entire society.

As a result, we come to a single conclusion: Man needs to be changed. The only source of all the problems in the universe is the human being. Unfortunately, no attention is paid to this issue.

So now we can see how, on the one hand, the crisis puts pressure on us—and it will cleanse everything, but by its firm hand. Nature knows no doubts, it puts pressure so that some species become extinct, and this is what could happen with humanity—everything is heading toward this. We will have to face the “Ice Age” and other environmental and social problems. We see that our imbalance with nature leads us to nothing good.

On the other hand, we have the method in hand that shows how we can nevertheless change the human being and make him an integral part of nature. Then we will be able to see the entire nature: still, vegetative, animal, and speaking like a single organism. By the way, this is also the view of Chinese medicine that treats a human being not as a separate part, but as being integrated into the general system of nature.
[105632]
From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

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Question: Is it possible to separate the desire for wealth from the desire for money? According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the first desire is the desire for wealth, then the desire for control, and only then the desire for knowledge. Today, money is everything: If I have money, I have health, wealth, knowledge, and control. It follows that money is the highest expression of a person’s desire.

Answer: Actually, every phase in our evolution is expressed differently in the hierarchy of needs. In the past the primary desire was the desire for a family. A home, a family, and relatives were the basis for everything. This is why several generations of the extended family lived together.

Until then the provision of food as a basic source of energy was very important. But because our desires change all the time and are in constant movement and combination, the next desire was the desire for sex. Previously it had an important place in man’s evolution, but today we can say that this desire is being replaced by others.

The desire for wealth is also gradually disappearing. In the past people were ready to sacrifice themselves to attain wealth, but today it’s quite the opposite: The ego has become very lazy. A person prefers to know the reason and the meaning for something first. He doesn’t feel like working twenty hours a day in order to make money.

In the past people traveled to different places in search for wealth. They were ready to work hard all their life only to climb the ladder of success, from a simple man to a great manager. But today this idea doesn’t attract young people. The question about the meaning of life arises in a person first: “So, what’s next?”

Question: Young people may not be attracted to it, but for those who control the world, money is everything.

Answer: We have to understand that the world is built as a totally different system, where 90% of the population are  at the bottom. They are totally managed and they don’t even suspect it. They are being manipulated by various systems of control, mass media, and other means. They are in a system built from above.

Ten percent of humanity are those who control all the systems. Then, according to the hierarchy, there are ten families (clans) that control everything. But it isn’t a question of wealth at all since hundreds of billions of dollars are in their hands. These are people who print money if they need to. They have a totally different standard of control.

This pyramid is very rigid. You cannot break into the system of control even if you are a very talented person. Reaching the top is practically impossible, unless you suddenly marry into one of these families.
[105583]
From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

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