Each of us feels that he is special and unique, as if he were the only one existing in the world and the whole world is intended for him. As generations develop, every person stands out more and more, egoism grows and requires a person to become more self-sufficient and to feel that he is the center of the world. Envy, fear, and conceit force us to act in a way so others will think we are higher than they. We are only willing to give this up if we have no choice or are too lazy because in order to achieve anything we have to lead an endless battle. However, the desire and urge to affirm oneself above everything still burns in a person.

We see that only the sensation of one’s own exclusivity invites people to “climb on top one another,” to step on each other, building up the human pyramid from the rulers on top to the smallest ones down below. Everything depends on how much a person stands out with his exclusivity, as well as the conditions and qualities he was born with and which he received from the environment in the process of his development.

One way or another, eventually people attain something in human society only by using the quality of their own exclusivity. This quality comes from the Creator: He is One, and therefore every one of us, who has separated from the common desire that was created by the Creator, also feels singular.

We are like a holographic picture where each part contains the whole. We used to be one soul, similar to the Creator, but then it broke into parts and now each of its pieces contains the single form of the common soul, but in the opposite form due to the breaking. There is an integral form of the initial soul concealed inside of me, and therefore, pressured by the force of the breaking, I feel whole and demand the whole world and the Creator to be at my disposal. Who or what can have any importance besides me?

As a result, our self-expression in this world is built only on the quality of exclusivity which operates in every person. Where do I aim all of my desires, thoughts, and abilities? At becoming even more unique and exclusive. Every person advances down this path according to his own forces, qualities, and speed, and also to the extent that the environment spurs him on.

The most important thing is: For whose benefit do I use my “I,” all of my qualities, and in general—my exclusivity? If I am unique in the world, then whom am I acting for? Eventually a person makes the decision that correctly using himself means serving the world just like the Creator. That is when he becomes human, similar to the Creator, and the world turns into a meeting place of the Creator and creation. There they unite and merge with one another, serving all the souls.

From this we see that the quality of exclusivity can play a dual role: at first a person strives to conquer the whole world like Napoleon and to use it as he sees fit, in opposition to the Creator, but in the end he reveals the need to change and acquire similarity to the Creator. Exclusivity can be used either for one’s self or for the sake of the neighbor. This is what determines a person’s place on the spiritual ladder.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/17/11, “Peace in the World”

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Nature controls us with the help of four categories: mercy, truth, justice, and peace. Of course, the best one is peace, which means perfection, and it can be achieved with the help of the quality of “truth.” However, we are incapable of making this come true because according to the truth, a person must be completely pure of the egoistic desire and be entirely in bestowal. He must receive only whatever is necessary for his life and bestow to others with all his might.

We still haven’t attained these states. Our society is incapable of this. We do not belong to the still, vegetative, or animate levels, which operate according to the laws and forces that nature awakens in them. Unlike those levels in nature, we are egoists and as such, our desire for pleasure desires to absorb and use everything.

As a result, we cannot affirm the category of “truth.” But without it, humanity faces a problem: If we don’t give and provide each other with everything, then society is flawed and therefore experiences all kinds of troubles and disasters. When there is no balance, people feel disadvantaged or, on the contrary, privileged.

Therefore, in order to avoid destroying the environment completely, the category of “mercy” awakens in us. “Mercy” is a sort of compensation, a way for the powerful to make up for things because they have the ability to use all of society for the sake of their own interests and then to allocate a little bit to the weak. That is how we use the categories of “mercy” and “justice.”

Of course, these compensations are inadequate, yet with their help we have been able to balance society out. Humanity has done a lot for the sake of this balancing act: charity and humanitarian organizations, all kinds of revolutions, public health services, education systems, and so on. However, nature demands much more from us. Lately we are finding that it requires us to create a system of mutual bestowal.

According to all the indications, today we have to rise to the level of “truth” and “peace”—in other words, to live by the principle, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his necessity.” On the the still, vegetative, and animate levels, this principle is maintained by nature absolutely and instinctively, whereas people have to come to this by reaching total correction, by ascending above their egoism and establishing the appropriate interconnections within society.

Today humanity is at an intermediate phase. We are no longer animals or primitive barbaric tribes living in a natural communism, yet we are still not corrected either. Right now we are at the beginning of realizing the crisis of our nature, our egoism.

So let’s listen to what Kabbalists say: They explain to us that there is a way and a means that can help us to create the perfect society.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/16/11, “Peace in the World”

A Social Agreement To Cease Hostilities
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Learning Isn’t For Us, Is It?

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Question: How can we disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah to the masses whose points of the hearts haven’t awakened yet? How do we withhold the Torah, meaning the method of correction of the evil inclination?

Answer: In the end of “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Baal HaSulam writes that, basically, everybody has this point since after the breaking of the collective soul, its parts have intermixed and become included into each other. However, some points are so big that when they awaken, they start pulling a person to the right place where he can receive correction and fulfillment. Whereas the other points are hidden, and such people are 99% of the population of the world.

We should address them according to their present desires. To those who come to study with us, we tell about the desire to go straight to the Creator and give the method of revealing Him in mutual connection with others. As for the other 99%, they have no relation to it, nothing in common whatsoever. They don’t need spirituality; they look at us in total surprise, unable to understand what we are lacking: There is soccer, there is the Internet, everything is fine.

And still, they do have problems and experience grief. Today, the entire world is sinking into a whirlpool, and it’s not our fault. Because of us, the Creator wouldn’t stir crises, cause disasters, and put humanity under the threat of exhausting our natural resources. He does it because of them.

We advance without needing this crisis since there is a force that is leading us forth. But for them, there has to be a force that will be pushing them from behind. This force is suffering.

Thus, when we address the masses, we have to offer them a method of how to resolve the global crisis in all areas of life, including family, education, drug abuse, depression, economy, climate change, and so on. We possess a method that makes it possible to correct all that’s bad so that we may feel good in this life, in this world.

We don’t say a word about the future world since people have no need for it whatsoever. If they hear anything about the spiritual side of the issue from us, they will write us off as mystics or madmen. Hence, we need to approach them adequately: without mentioning Kabbalah, the Creator and the created being, the purpose of creation, and so on.

We simply have a method, an instrument that can correct the current bad state, the crisis that is consuming the whole world. We have something to offer them; we know what to do. Nobody knows but us.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/13/2011, “The Freedom”

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We are all egoists. So how can we organize regular life in human society in a way where we won’t eat each other?

That is why people have agreed that we can’t manage alone, after all. Other people serve me in one way, and I serve them in some other way. Without that we just can’t manage. Once we understand this, we come to an agreement: Let’s do this without waiting for a disastrous situation. Let’s do it out of mercy: I give a little bit to you, and you give a little bit to me.

Suppose I am driving in a car and someone in front of me suddenly stops. Then I also have to stop. If there is someone standing in front of me in line, then I have to wait. I spend time, gas, and money on others because we have all agreed on mutual sympathy and have to pay for it.

We create funds to help one another, such as medical funds and retirement funds. A person understands that it’s worth it for him to pay the medical fund even if he is healthy because his egoism recognizes how it will benefit from this. That is how we make concessions ahead of time because we need each other. This is “mercy”: We are willing to bestow to others in specific ways because we won’t survive without them.

As a result, people divide into two categories: Some promote “mercy,” wishing for everything to be “pretty,” while others support the category of “truth,” which says: “Mine is mine and yours is yours.” So whose side is truth on? The answer is: neither.

However, if every person clings to what is his, then society is torn apart to pieces, whereas if we add mercy, then we can somewhat soften or sweeten the situation. As a result, human societies throughout history have differed from one another by the correlation of these two approaches.

Society can be softer or harsher. In its pure form, capitalism does not like to play around: If you earned it, receive what’s yours, but if you haven’t earned it, then you can starve to death. Others understand that this is not a solution because hungry people will come and rob you, and maybe will even murder you. So it’s worth it to give them something “out of mercy.”

That is how humanity develops, but it cannot achieve piece on this path. Granted, truth is the lot of the strong, and mercy is the lot of the weak, but justice stands in the middle as the foundation of the scale so our cups could sway to and fro.

That is how society keeps itself back from self-destruction, but this does not bring it any closer to real peace – to conciliation and mutual completion.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/15/11, “Peace in the World”

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Unity is not equalization, but mutual inclusion. The method of education is based on this idea as well: Everyone is unique, and hence children develop through discussions that allow them to learn other children’s opinions no matter how numerous these opinions are.

Thanks to this method, each child absorbs from the others, becomes imbued with their way of being, and grows to be even more unique. The child receives from everyone else and grows on that, developing his own properties.

This is what we want to achieve with our method of education. People unite correctly, making a contact, communicating with each other, and build a human society themselves, a society which is based on mutual inclusion of each into all and all into each. As a result, everybody’s uniqueness flourishes even more.

To do this, children conduct discussions, which we direct and manage just a little bit. Meanwhile, everybody has an opportunity to speak out, experience the role of a judge and defendant, advocate and prosecutor. We develop a human being in each child only through mutual inclusion.

Then, from year to year, children will grow more different from each other. The difference between them will strike one’s eye every time, but so what? Namely this will give power to the following unification. That’s the entire point: Without suppressing the individual, we build a community from great personalities.

Thereby the method of Kabbalah allows us to use the entire creation. Otherwise, we simply destroy a person, reducing him to a cog in the machine, whereas in fact, each detail, conscious of its indispensability, should put this machine into action.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/12/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”: Thus you find that the attribute of truth has no practical ability to organize the path of the individual and the path of the collective in an absolute and satisfactory manner. Also, it is completely insufficient for organizing life at the end of the correction of the world.

The Creator seems to be playing with us. On one hand, He says that everything needs to be done according to the attribute of truth: Everybody has to give as much as possible and receive life necessities, according to his nature which he did not choose. At the same time, bestowal, even wholehearted, also depends on the innate qualities and differences.

It means that everyone is unique in reception and bestowal. How do we solve the problem and remain in the category of “truth”? What criterion should we use? Working hours or output are not suitable because everybody is different. The Creator created us so that we are simply unable to draw comparisons between ourselves. How can we establish the correct interconnection between us?

For example, I may spend hours to get a smile from someone, while someone else smiles right away. Everybody has his own character, habits, mood swings, and a thousand other internal parameters. How do we work with each other?

Does the Creator “trip us”? “You have to be equal,” He says. But we are different! How is it possible to evaluate a human according to a benchmark? Where would a suitable criterion be found?

It is time for us to build a human society in which all of us will be connected like cogwheels. Nobody knows how he is supposed to rotate in relation to others. What example can be used? How would it be realized? The task seems simply unreal, and this is a very big problem.

All of humanity has to understand the difficulty that lies here and its cause. Today, we already understand that we have entered a new epoch and must unite in an amicable way. There is no other choice: We have to reduce consumption, limit our evil inclination, our egoism, to begin to decrease the standard of living in one region and share the released surplus with the other. But how?

Each of those who succeed in economy, industry, science, culture, and so on can stand up and say: “I have achieved everything with my own hands. I worked on my success, so let them do the same.” And it would sound fair.

In other words, a person says: “Go to the Master who created me. He put me in such conditions, and I have achieved everything.” That is, direct all your claims with respect to our inequality to the Creator. It is He who created people different and requires them to achieve unity, without which it’s impossible to continue our existence.

This is the problem we have yet to resolve.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/12/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Defining the problem: The free fall of the world into a global crisis and a threatening lack of natural resources (oil, water, and so on) make it necessary to transform the global economy into an economy of reasonable consumption.

Many people, including businessmen, economists, politicians, and others agree with this conclusion. However, no one can imagine the possibility of human existence without competition, according to the principle of “to each according to his needs.” It’s even more difficult to envision a peaceful, coordinated transition to reasonable, limited production and consumption.

The future appears to be a society of reasonable consumption created by a few survivors of the world war. Is a peaceful transition to the practice of reasonable consumption an option?

The solution to a peaceful transition to a reasonable consumption: We need to create a critical mass of intelligent people who realize that the current system no longer works. The role (cause) of the crisis is to radically increase the number of people prepared to assess the real problems wisely and sensibly.

The main task during this period is to maximize the number of people who are conscious of the problem, explaining the actual mechanisms that operate in the world so that their attitude to the world will be objective, constructive, and based on the correct value system. This period ends when the number of people comprehending humanity’s problem correctly becomes large enough to produce a significant impact on society.

Development of a model society of reasonable consumption, ensuring its normal development: The model consists of economic and spiritual parts. Spiritual development and fulfillment have to compensate for the human need for economic growth beyond what is necessary.

Implementation of the model:

1. Creating and improving an education network. Teaching about life according to the developed model of a society of reasonable consumption.
2. Actual implementation.

Urgent tasks:
Today, we are in the middle of the first of the four phases:

• The development of a network structure that would explain the critical state of humanity and the only sustainable model of the future society to the adult population. Defining the principles of integral education of children, which are necessary for providing them with survival skills in the new (integral) conditions of nature.
• The development of an economic model.
• The development of a spiritual model.
• The promotion of the economic and spiritual models to the world through the network structure.
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Today humanity is trying to unite. People instinctively understand that together is better than alone. Different countries are trying to make agreements over and over again, to enter a union that will make them stronger and more successful. But do they succeed in doing this? In the end we see that this leads to conflicts and even wars. The problem remains: We do not know how to unite.

However, the urge to consolidate has naturally permeated humanity for many years already. This is the partnership that is inherent to nations and people: I guard myself and yet I still see that it’s worth it for me to unite with others. Together we will create a monopoly and become stronger than everyone else.

This drive that has not grown any weaker will eventually bring us to such enormous troubles that nature itself will show us the need to unite. It is revealing to us that we have to merge into a single, global, integral whole, to totally complete one another, to become perfect, whole, and accept the “round world” where all the parts are interconnected.

If nature puts the challenge this way, then how should we now build human society? After all, the problem of egoism is concentrated only in human society. This is the only place where egoism works against unity. As a result, we discover that we are incapable of uniting.

Why did the Creator put a stumbling block in front of us, making us different and unlike one another? If we were the same, everything would be clear: Every person gives a certain amount and receives a certain amount, and the matter is settled.

Yet we are different, and therefore we have to ascend above egoism and activate the intention for the sake of bestowal, without any connection to personal benefit. Only on this condition will man be completely able to unite with others. Then he will reach bestowal for the sake of bestowal, and then—reception for the sake of bestowal. Only if every person takes this path will perfect unity emerge among us.

This is why we were not created the same: because otherwise we would solve the problem on the material, animate level and would become tantamount to ants in an anthill.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/12/11, “The Peace”

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Question: How will man look in his final stage of development?

Answer: As I see it, he will restrict himself in order to employ nature only as necessary and won’t feel the lack of anything, while all his yearnings will turn to the welfare of others. He will use only as much as is needed for correct corporeal existence, only to actualize his aspiration toward the well-being of others.

Meanwhile, the body will be receiving only what is good, vital, and most beneficial for it to be healthy. As to the yearning for others and contact with them, it will allow a person to reveal the integral system of total interdependence for himself. Thereby, he will attain the inner dimension of nature, its internal force, perfect and eternal.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/1/2011, “Peace in the World”

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Question: Can it be so that the social structure itself may become one of the obstacles on the path of advancement on the spiritual ladder?

Answer: In other words, how can we move from the egoistic world to the spiritual one with balanced consumption? This is a multi-layered process. Right now, we face the first one of them, when humanity begins to understand that it has to restrict itself because the riches of natural resources and nature in general don’t belong to individuals or states.

But for seven billion people to exist on Earth and not to “eat each other up,” we have to reach equilibrium not only among ourselves, but also between us and nature. This is already clear to all people of good sense. The problem is in how to transition to it.

Transition as such is essentially egoistic. We might be able to help them with it, but I think that this transition will occur as it did in many countries already. Have you seen how a million people came out to the streets and changed the environment, society, and the government?

We are yet to witness how immigrants will flood Europe and swallow it completely. Do you think the United States is that far from Africa or South America? Not at all. And since nature forces us into balance with each other and with itself, we don’t have a choice. Nature works toward homeostasis, and it’s not up to us.

So far, it doesn’t pertain to spiritual correction, and this very process is necessary for us to exist. If I don’t want to fear that my neighbor might come to kill me, it’s beneficial for me to share my wealth out of necessity.

The hope that the arms and force the developed countries possess will help them is illusory. Rome, which was even more powerful, still fell. The question is: How can we transition to the next stage when we discover that we are unable to distribute wealth fairly as nature dictates? How will we compensate man and his egoistic desires to get bigger, more powerful, and wealthier?  What will we sustain it with?  What will we sustain him with? After all, people can’t stay at the animate level of evolution since our ego keeps growing and demanding even more.

Humanity has no solution to the issue: What compensation can we offer to those who will realize the need for a fair distribution? What will satisfy their ego? If we want everyone to remain as animals, to be the same, we thereby destroy man because the “human” level is above that of the “beast” in each of us. There has to be spiritual compensation, and only the wisdom of Kabbalah can provide it.

But we all know that 90 years ago, in Russia, they wanted to achieve the same by making a revolution. But as a result, a regular person didn’t get compensated for it. Why should he be satisfied with a typical apartment, an average salary that provides for his retirement plan, and a normal vacation time? Why should he be equal with others and be happy with just what he has?

For the time being, we advance according to the program of nature, in order to gradually present it to humanity in the degree that it will realize that it has no other option: It has to come to a relatively equal distribution. Therefore, if we don’t offer man spiritual compensation, we won’t be able to implement the law of balance with nature. And to do so, we will need the knowledge of the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From Lesson 5, WE! Convention 4/2/2011

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