Question: If I am corrected, I see a better world around me. But if I see suffering around, how should I treat it?

Answer: Our life is a duality. On one hand, our body belongs to the animate world, but on the other hand, the desire that we are developing belongs to a higher level, the human degree.

It is said about the world that we see around us: “Everyone is like an animal.” A human being in our world is not just similar to an animal, he is even worse. By nature, animals instinctively take care of their own existence. They have no urge for binge eating, inventing goodies, sweets, and delicacies for themselves; grains or grass are enough for a donkey. Give him bread instead, and he will not want it. Similarly, animals have no impulse to overindulge in sex; they act on instinct, breeding in the seasons designated by nature. They do not have palaces, burrows are enough for them. This is animal existence.

Unlike them, a human has exorbitant desires so that as a result of development they discover it has brought him to a dead end. This is what we reveal today.

So seeing people’s suffering, we have to mentally divide their existence into two parts. What does a person need on the animal level to live a healthy normal life? He needs a shelter, food, clothing, family and other necessary, but only rational, conditions. Of course, we cannot live as we did a thousand generations ago. I need to wish everyone in the world to have acceptable conditions, but not more. The general law of nature states: On the animal level, you must ensure your existence, and all your other desires, thoughts, and abilities, everything that you have in addition, you must devote to spiritual ascent.

So, if we talk about the future world, about the life until the end of correction, when this world disappears from our feelings, the reasonable set of things, necessary for material existence should be provided and everything else given to spiritual development.

If today, we had organized our life in this way, we would have found that there is everything in this world necessary to provide each of the seven billion people with normal physical conditions. Most of the day, we would be free from material work in order to study and realize our internal spiritual work to change ourselves. This is what we should strive for.

I do not know yet how it can be realized in practice, but hope very much that we will be able to explain to people that this is the correct way of life in the world. Through the crisis and explanations, we will come to the middle line, to a state, in which the world accepts it.
[89263]
From the Convention in Italy 9/30/12, Lesson 2

Related Material:
A Spiritual Person In A Carrier From Earth
Which Desires To Fulfill?
Defining Vital Necessities

Filed under: Conventions, Crisis, Egoism, Evolution, Kabbalah Dissemination, Q&A, Society, World - No Comments →

Question: History demonstrates that major wars always happen at the borderlines between epochs when old stereotypes are being destroyed. On one hand, wars always triggered destruction; on the other hand, they pulled humanity to a higher level of evolution. Is it possible for us to skip the next war?

Answer: First of all, I don’t try to outsmart anybody. I do what I am supposed to do according to my mission, using all my means to the end. We do not know start and end dates.

Egyptian exile experience suggests that suffering tremendous pain and misery preceded the birth, the escape from Egypt. Labor contractions are extremely intense. Overall, there is what is called the ten plagues, ten labor contractions, that form the need for correction in us. So, we have to go through them anyway.

I don’t know when they will be over, nor can I identify each attack. I’m not so wise to know how things will unfold this time around. There are no exact directions, and I myself have not yet passed the process; I go through it together with everyone else: What can I say? Especially because it is about the plane of this world with its layer of egoistic thickness. So, we simply do our job.

As to a threat of war, wars vary. The main thing is to keep the people of Israel in the land of Israel and initiate dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah for the sake of correcting the world. Everything that opposes this purpose goes against the goal of creation. This is how we should regard this issue. In accordance with the law of root and branch, correction is possible only in this land. Although, according to Baal HaSulam’s writings, Jerusalem today (after the shattering occurred) is merely a source of evil.

Question: A cancerous tumor destroys processes in the body of humanity. In medicine, they use chemotherapy in this case. If we translate it to society, is this equivalent to nuclear war?

Answer: No, I don’t think we will really come to this point, not if we manage to embrace the world with the methodology of correction and have more people accept our thoughts and desires. Nor will it happen if people start understanding us better, mainly through our internal lines of connection that “thread” through the all of humanity.

In any case, our core activities should be held in the land of Israel. With all the pressure and our giving the people the wisdom of correction, it will spread throughout the world without any problems. Baal HaSulam writes  in the Introduction to The Book of Zohar that it is written in many sources. I repeat, according to the law of roots and branches, the main correction is here.

This is our job. Therefore, all our groups wherever they are and whichever language they speak, besides disseminating the wisdom, should use every opportunity to influence what is happening in Israel. This land is at the very center of the world map and is the most problematic place.

Question: Contemporary Jewish people include people who have come from all over the world bringing their traditions and stereotypes. Will they be able to rise above their “baggage” and fulfill the part of the work that is assigned to them? Will they be able to unite the world and raise it to a new level of evolution without revolution and war?

Answer: It’s not about country of origin, although it of course plays a role, above which they have to rise for the sake of unity. In general, the ascent will spread the upper Light among everybody and will allow It to reach the parts of the world with which we already have established connections. The dispersion of the Jewish people happened only for the sake of making them bond with other nations. So, when the people of Israel are united, the power of their unification transmits through the lines of internal connection with the nations of the world, thus making them sense and accept what is going on here in the land of Israel.
[88784]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/19/12, “Introduction to the Book Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

Related Material:
A Vessel That Distributes The Abundance
Forward Towards The Dark
“You Will Be A Wanderer On The Earth”

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Israel, Kabbalah Dissemination, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Any system built sooner or later faces the external resistance of the world. What kinds of informational counteractions can we create in the integral society?

Suppose the world around us is indifferent at the moment to the idea of establishing an integral society. But at some point we will begin to disturb them at least by the fact that people in the integral society live a better, happier life than they do. Then they will begin to feel a resistance. So in any case there is a hostile environment.

Answer: First, I think that there doesn’t have to be a hostile environment. This society should be open for everyone. Certainly it should have some kind of buffer zone in which those who want to join this society are educated and after having studying seriously and having been trained they could be gradually integrated into the integral society.

This isn’t what is done in Europe. The French began accepting everyone from North Africa, since as they claim, “we occupied you and now we are giving you a chance to join us.” This wasn’t a wise political move when people who didn’t want to integrate into French society and weren’t willing to change anything, moved to France. Thus they remained foreign with regard to French culture, language, religion, and everything else.

It’s the same with the European market, which instead of a common market became an actual market. Before implementing the concept of a “common market” they should have educated all the Europeans according to the integral approach so as to bring them all to one understanding, one culture, and some unified qualities, meaning a desire to cooperate mutually in order to summon the upper energy, the integral force of nature, upon them.

This didn’t happen and so they don’t know what to do now. The solution is the same solution as before and it’s still hanging in the air. They can do it now too, but not with the leadership that is currently in power.

If such a society is created it has to guard itself from the rest. This means that it has to develop a very wide working environment in integral education: “Welcome, you can join us, there is room for everyone, but only after you pass a course and certain training in integral education and begin to live, study and work according to this principle. Only then can you be members of our society.”
[89194]
From KabTV’s “The Integral World: The Formula of Integral Society,” 7/1/12

Related Material:
В духовном все равны
Overview Of The Integral Education Course: The Influence Of The Environment
Preparing Experts In Human Nature

Filed under: Education, Integral Upbringing, Q&A, Society - No Comments →

Question: What does it mean “to develop the state of unity that we have passed?”

Answer: To develop a state means not to be afraid that it will disappear and at the same time to be afraid it will, to try to pull it and to try to push it away, to flirt with it, to study it. Similarly, when tasting something new, you do not swallow this piece, but want to know what it is: how much salt, pepper, and sugar it contains, what the sweetness, moisture, texture of this product is.

You want to feel who it reminds you of: your mother, your grandmother who prepared these dishes or something else for you. That is, you have to play with it, you have to produce various information records in yourself: what it looks like, what it can be compared to, how I can hold it, let it go, and return again. These states allow a person to expand his soul.

The soul is the element that contains two opposite forces: egoism and altruism. When a person has only one ego, he has no soul. One force can exist only as a point. When he starts to develop the second force and contrast it with the first one, then these two opposing forces form some volume between them.
[89229]
From a Virtual Lesson 9/23/12

Related Material:
Using The Environment As A Source Of The Upper Force
From Egoism To Love Is One Stop Upward
Dissolving In The Cup Of Unity

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Q&A, Spirituality - 1 Comment →

Question: While designing the model of our social policy we began to think about what we can do with regards to the external informative influence of TV, newspapers etc. We have worked out several models.

One of the models is total openness, but it is not suitable since a person is easily tempted and remains, as you have said correctly, on the animal level.

The model of total secrecy doesn’t work either since “the forbidden fruit is sweet.” There is a barrier, as with the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain, where information doesn’t seep in, etc.

The only model that could be fulfilled is having no censorship at all. But every source of information is accepted as reliable to some extent by the internal censors. A person can choose which source of information he wants to use: those which he fully trusts or those which he doesn’t. But this model didn’t work either because there is no education or teaching in it.

Answer: I believe that this model will not work because we have to build our own influence on the environment according to our teaching and education, by withdrawing from external influences.

Question: Withdrawing? But the “forbidden fruit is sweet.”

Answer: There is no “forbidden fruit,” since the perspective of my society is that there is no “forbidden fruit.” I have to withdraw since in a state of weakness I can deteriorate and ruin the whole process of my changing from an egoist to an altruist.

So there should be a system that selects good and right programs from the ones that exist today, and it should be clear and accurate. There should be a special filter, censorship.

There is no education without censorship since any form of education is under the influence of the environment. Here you are providing a person with such an environment that without censorship your efforts may be futile.

On the other hand, fewer people may enter different Internet sites and TV channels full of rubbish as a result of our intensive education and other external conditions. But we must help him; otherwise it will be ineffective, because as long as the ego is active in a person, it will obligate him to roam through all the garbage on the Internet.

We voluntarily agree to the filter. No one is forcing us, but it is one of our conditions.
[89187]
From KabTV’s “The Integral World: The Formula of Integral Society,” 7/1/12

Related Material:
How To Keep Your Uniqueness
Overcoming Indifference And Boredom
Overview Of The Integral Education Course: The Influence Of The Environment

Filed under: Education, Integral Upbringing, Q&A, Society - 1 Comment →

Question: Suppose I have certain resources and I have to invest them in integral education and teaching. A government official comes to me and persuades me to invest the money in a certain school promising that in five years it will be different than other schools. On the basis of what criterion can this difference be seen?

Answer: A government official or a manager will not see anything. A manager is a mechanical egoist who cannot see anything from within his ego. He is only interested in acting before his supervisors and climbing to the next level in the hierarchy of the egoistic pyramid. He will look at people dealing with integral education and teaching as people who are studying totally unrealistic systems; who are solving some internal social problems or individual emotional problems. He wouldn’t care about it. He is interested in figures: How much did I invest, what did I get, how much will I put in my pocket, how much will I give to the management? These people cannot manage anything, not to mention deciding anything!

So we are asking him to do one thing only: to help us with the administration, that’s all. We have trained teachers, educators, lecturers. We have prepared all that is necessary. Let us work in this environment and help us in that, which means provide us with some resources on the media, on local TV, at the entrance to schools, universities, etc.; we will do all the rest. When will you see the results? In five weeks, not in five years!

You will see an immediate result in the first month of our work. After one lesson, you will see totally different people. You will see how they change immediately.

Of course, it is great work to change human nature, but the first changes are immediate. Suppose a person is seriously ill and you suddenly notice a great improvement in his condition, an inner adaptation, understanding, recognition, and feelings.

People will not go out to the town squares to shatter windows anymore. They will begin to maintain a clean environment and the incidence of violence and street crime will decrease sharply.

You will profit economically, qualitatively and quantitatively and then we try to invest the resources that were saved in integral education and teaching.

At first we don’t need anything at all. In a couple of weeks without investing anything, you will find out that it works: on a certain group, in a certain kindergarten, at school, on students, in some plant or in a small neighborhood. We will start with four to five places in which we will work with the people and after several lessons you will see what happens to them and how they change.

At the same time, you will be able to accurately calculate your economic profit, not to mention the good atmosphere that is created and all the other things.

The point isn’t even the economic benefit, but in the fact that the accelerating crisis will bring millions into the streets and you will have to do something with them. These aren’t just people whom you have to feed so that they won’t eat you, but people will be murdered, robbed, raped and will burn everything around them. Having nothing to do, they will simply degenerate. We, on the other hand, offer you to raise people to a higher level.

So the benefit of implementing integral education and teaching is unquestionable.
[89148]
From KabTV’s “The Integral World: The Formula of Integral Society,” 7/1/12

Related Material:
The End Of The Familiar World
Against The Wall
Mutual Responsibility Course: A Post-Crisis Crash Course

Filed under: Crisis, Education, Integral Upbringing, Q&A, Society - 1 Comment →

Question: This convention seems to have opened a new door for us and everything that we do seems tasteless from here, as if we have lost all its previous juiciness.

Answer: So why haven’t you asked for it?! You are constantly saying: “We! We!” so why didn’t you all ask together?!

Question: I feel that this is a new state in which I still don’t know how to ask. It is as if we’ve touched something, but we haven’t processed it enough yet so that we can actually fulfill it.

Answer: You are not asked to put your request in nice elaborate words. A father understands a simple cry.

Question: So why haven’t we asked?

Answer: Because you cannot unite and support one another. There are still different calculations that control you: shame, lack of readiness; in short, there is no true decisiveness yet, when you simply break through without any calculations.

Question: Where does the shame that doesn’t let me break through come from? We speak so much about closeness and unity, but I know that there are still locks in my heart, limitations that dictate what is allowed and what is forbidden.

Answer: It is because the Creator is still far from you; at the moment you don’t feel that He is close. You have to try harder to imagine Him in the form of the unity of the group, which is actually what we have started this week. The “Creator” is the essence of the outcome of our unity. This is what we have to pray for and turn to.

In any case, we need an outcry, a prayer, a request that is free of any calculations. If you cannot reach that it means that you are still far from the Creator or that the Creator is far from you.

But all the complaints are also justified and helpful. The more you complain the better. They will lead to the right and accurate calculation.

I think that this time we’ve taken a big step forward. It isn’t just a step; we’ve actually stepped inside and delved into clarifications, opening our hearts wide, although we haven’t scraped off its peel with an “iron brush.” It is indeed a good clarification: We have begun to sense, to feel, where this unity actually is, how we discover the AHP of the upper, a higher level, how we identify it, how do we all adhere to it so that it will raise us, and what is the relationship we have with it.

We’ve been through many things that relate to connection and unity, and although they seem very sublime, distant, and abstract, they will gradually come together in our feeling. Then it will be easier for us to turn to them and to fulfill them.

I think that this convention is very deep and has brought us the deepest most intensive clarification. It is meant for people who are actually only two steps away from entering spirituality. I am very happy that thanks to the feeling in the group here and throughout the world I can speak in a way I never have before.

Question: What should the right request be?

Answer: “Open the gate for us!”

It is at the time you feel that all the roads are blocked, that all the gates are locked, that you cry out. This is the 50^th gate, the desirable state we spoke about and read so much about. Now you are feeling it in practice, and only the collective prayer is missing, the pressure, the persistence. Try, make an effort, it will come…

I am very happy about the states we have been through.
[89095]
From the Convention of Unity, Day Two 9/21/12, Lesson 4 

Related Material:
Plead For The Resurrection Of The Dead
Cry For Salvation
A Person Is Born In Joy

Filed under: Conventions, Group Work, Prayer and Intention, Q&A, Unity - 1 Comment →

Question: In the integral society there is a kind of “abstract” goal which is beautiful and perfect and that everyone loves. Won’t we be stepping on the same rakes the utopians once stepped on?

Answer: What does the whole problem come down to? Only a change in human nature.

If that is possible, the integral society will change from utopia to reality. If it is impossible, then it will remain a utopia and it is better to stay away from such a society.

First we have to find out whether we can evoke a certain force upon us, a certain attribute that will create certain conditions so that every person’s nature will change from an egoistic one to an altruistic one. This can be fulfilled by consistent, gradual change of small groups of people and then of increasingly larger groups. But on the whole this process should include all of humanity.

Can a person who was created as a total egoist who only thinks about himself and nothing else (this is the way we are programmed) change his program? And what is more, can he change it so that the object who receives the pleasure is not me thanks to everything that surrounds me, but rather that my pleasure will be the wellbeing of all those around me, brought about by me.

The pleasure remains. It has to be since it is part of our nature, only the character of the filling changes. On the account of what? A mother, for example, is filled thanks to the fact that she gives her child everything—this is natural love. Can we attain this state when we feel natural love for people who are total strangers, who are opposite to us and distant, when I feel that they are an inseparable part of me just like a child is for his mother? Can we find such a force?

If we find it, we will be able to conduct such an experiment and see that it is so.
[89018]
From KabTV’s “The Integral World: The Formula of Integral Society,” 7/1/12

Related Material:
More Important Than Life Itself
Don’t Sink Others Today So They Won’t Drown You Tomorrow
Karl Marx And Kabbalah

Filed under: Integral Upbringing, Love, Q&A, Society - No Comments →

Question: Which connectable parts should be highlighted in man and in nature? Is it possible to deal with the division of the whole into parts in order to focus our efforts on them?

Answer: First we have to see nature as a totally integral system in which everything is mutually connected. There is no particle, atom, force, or field that is not connected into one system, no matter whether it is on the still nature level or on the vegetative, animate, or speaking levels, or whether it is conscious or not. It mustn’t be divided into parts.

We divide it into parts because we cannot understand and grasp all of it, just as we divide all of nature into different sciences. There is no physics, chemistry, biology, zoology or all the other sciences. It is more convenient for us to study nature this way—in some concrete discoveries. It only displays the weakness of our recognition and of our awareness.

Nature itself is totally integral and no part in it can highlighted. It is mutually connected.

But we can attain it as egoistic parts that are detached from one another intermittently. Then we can reconnect them gradually by building the original mosaic. But this is only relative to us, since nature itself is integral. By creating this mosaic, we gradually discover not just the particles that compose it but the elements that connect, thus forming the general picture. So at the same time this picture receives its next upper existence. It is just as if we could put our body together from different organs and systems and it would begin to function and life would be appear in it.

We must understand that by getting closer to the integration in our recognition of nature we eventually attain the life in it, which can be called the only upper force in nature. It has a plan for our development, its beginning and its end. But we can only approach it if we constantly aspire for integrality.

We will start to feel it gradually, gradually guess, and then more and more clearly reveal it. And I think that we will begin to discover it not after we assemble all of nature’s parts into one picture, but even as we get closer, we begin to get a foretaste of the completed picture.

We see that as we get closer we begin to perceive the integrality and we will gradually attain its upper thought, not in the absolute revealed state, but in stages.
[89015]
From KabTV’s “The Integral World: The Formula of Integral Society” 7/1/12

Related Material:
The Next Phase Of Human Development
The Discrepancy Between The Two Systems
That Loud Word “Nature”

Filed under: Integral Upbringing, Q&A, Society, World - No Comments →

Question: Where is the borderline between suppression of material desires and gaining spiritual ones?

Answer: We do not suppress our desires! We only discuss them and immediately assign more weight, greatness to the next, higher level of desires, the ones that drive us to unity and integrity, since they are far more important, better, higher, superior, and valued than our egoistic inclinations. It’s so even if our egoistic desires are seemingly of a positive kind, such as wanting to listen to a certain type of music, or read some kind of literature, or go to the ballet, or watch a football match, or go to a men’s club, or eat a special type of food—whatever it might be.

In other words, at this phase, with the help of the group I must receive a very serious and strong impression that these collective integral global standards are of a next level. They are not one step up, but incomparably more advanced than our aforementioned animal instinctive desires that nature automatically aroused within us and we, like slaves, tried to realize them quickly.
[88220]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/1/12

Related Material:
In Order To Rise And Connect
Smoothing Out the Imbalance
The Days Of Awe Before The New Year

Filed under: Education, Group Work, Integral Upbringing, Q&A - No Comments →