Question: You said that mass media must change and instead of being a commercial tool, it should become an educational one. What will they teach and how will they raise us?

Answer: A person has to be raised gradually, by way of various articles, information, and a special approach. In other words, the content itself could remain the same, but the key is how to present it and why. Any article in a newspaper, a video clip, a breaking news report, even an ad, everything is accepted and published only on condition that it leads us to correction.

There is a place for everything, but let’s focus on how we use it: What do we wish to achieve with it, what transformations in a person? Instead of chewing on all negative events and screaming, “Look what is happening in our schools, with the police, in the slums,” we should use it for correction and analysis of why this occurred, how to resist it, what can be done so that tomorrow it won’t happen again.

Mass media has to organize human society since they are called “the means of communication,” and our salvation lies in the connection between us. They have to mobilize us all to unify and, together, put these fires out, heal all these sores that are opening here and there in our society.

Mass media must build society, rather than fish some tiny accident out and blow it out of proportion in order to sell themselves at a higher rate. We need a completely different approach and media hosts. Mass media should be in the hands of wise men that understand the purpose of creation and know what humanity must be moving toward.

They must be great guides in order to use everything that exists in the world. After all, we can publish information about anything (nothing must be hidden), but the key is how to explain it in reference to the spiritual goal: Where it is rooted and where it leads to, how not to repeat the same mistakes, how an event that took place in one region impacts the entire world, why it occurred, why there and not here, and so on.

It has to be an explanation accompanied by explanation and not merely an exaggeration of a certain accident; on the contrary, it must be a call for sympathy, connection, and realization that the world is global and we are totally interconnected.

I spoke of this in Arosa, Switzerland, as long as five years ago. Mass media will keep reporting the same news as they do today; the only difference lies in how the information will be presented, how it will be approached, disclosed, and served. That’s what the focus should be on!

It is a very delicate thing. It could be just a few lines, but they will be presented at such an angle as to point a person in the right direction.
[36425]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/24/2011, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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Question: What is the main principle that our children have to internalize?

Answer: Children have to understand that everything always changes in a person and in the world, and the only thing that’s constant is the approach which says: There is no other force that can help a person advance through life besides the force he receives from the environment. He does not get the forces to advance from the ego, nor from the influence of the mass media, nor from the influence of the external environment, but only from the group of people that gives him a specific value system, the understanding of the Creator’s importance. In order to attain the Creator, the quality of bestowal, a person must always advance by faith above reason, receiving from his environment the desire, aspiration, and understanding of the importance of this goal, and the feeling of worry about how to attain it.

In essence, a person always takes on the form of his environment, meaning he absorbs its value system, its conception of the future, its very essence. In other words, he becomes included into the external Kli or desire, acquires the quality of love, and comes out into the unification of all the souls—Malchut of the World of Atzilut.

Only by correctly including himself in his environment can a person reach the Creator. The inner unity that is present there is due to the fact that the Creator chose these people and united them with each other. This is Malchut of the World of Atzilut, the Shechina where a person immediately finds the Creator.

Therefore, the new generation, our children must internalize that this is exactly how we advance. This is our path. There are no descents, but only ascents. There is no confusion. Everything taking place is necessary for making new discernments.
[36026]
From the talk on education on 2/18/11

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Question: If the governments are no longer capable of making correct decisions, who will rule the country to prevent anarchy? Who will govern the world?

Answer: Baal HaSulam writes that we will reach a state when the world will be ruled by Sanhedrin (the supreme assembly of sages, Kabbalists). Say, there will be 120 people (like in the ancient Sanhedrin) who will define the entire process of correction that the world has to undergo.

The only decision that needs to be made is how to advance toward the adhesion with the Creator, what’s the best way to do it for each layer of the society, each age group, and nationality. Then we will be successful.

We have to aim at the spiritual goal and correct the entire world, from top to bottom. For this, we don’t need any revolutions, but one: the revolution in education which needs to become global.

Today the rulers only act in their self-interest. They cannot form a true government since government implies connection. And how can they connect if each of them thinks how to come to power and get around everyone else? That is, everyone thinks about how to take advantage of others in order to get ahead.

This is our egoistic nature, and therefore, we shouldn’t expect anything else: We will only see failure after failure. The people will change the governments, but it will only become worse until we finally realize that we only need to change education.

The world needs to understand that it exists in dis-harmony with nature. If a general, integral network is descending upon us from above, and it considers only everyone taken together, while each of us thinks only about himself, then we are in opposition to the force that rules us. Nothing will help us but new education.

The relationships we build below have to resemble the global network which rules the world from above. We must be similar to it, and the greater this similarity will be, the more peaceful and good the world will become.

The upper network is invariable, it remains the same; it only descends and approaches us increasingly more. If we do not change in accordance to it, we will start feeling increasingly worse year to year and even day by day!

Our only task is to change ourselves. Humanity here, below, has to also become global and integral. It is possible only by education of a new human.
[35080]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/11/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: Egoism is very shrewd, so how can I be sure that my game with it is really leading me forward and isn’t another trick that egoism is playing on me?

Answer: If I include myself in the environment and am permeated by what is important to it, then I advance by faith above reason. I deliberately bend down before the group and adopt its values because they are spiritual. I place myself in front of them so they will raise me.

I never have the forces to ascend independently. At the same time, I am always in some environment that directs me toward specific values. The values of the material environment are also artificial and false. Society motivates me to buy a car, a house, and furniture, but who said that I really need all of that? After all, the body is an animal and all it wants is to rest. Give it a specific number of calories and a comfortable place to lay down. It doesn’t want anything more.

However, society tells me what I have to buy and what I have to aspire to. Otherwise people don’t respect me. Thus, instigated by the environment, I spend my whole life trying to do things to make it like me.

But now, when I am already full to the brim, I no longer want to dance to its tune. Instead I enter a new environment. I choose a society that has a spiritual goal. Now all I have to do is raise it in my eyes and then I will grow with its help.
Thus, I build an artificial environment for my spiritual growth. Therein lies my entire work. The higher I raise the friends in my eyes, the higher I will ascend.
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/22/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: Why is spiritual work also called a “yoke” or “burden”?

Answer: It’s because a person has to accept it by faith above reason. Every time he is about to become corrected, he is inside an egoistic desire. Therefore, when taking this work upon himself, which is aimed at the intention for the sake of bestowal, he does not see any benefit in it and perceives it as a burden.

My correction cannot be based on profit. If something is profitable for me, then I am acting egoistically. And on the contrary, if I accept the quality of Bina into my desire for pleasure, with Bina being above Malchut, then Bina becomes a “yoke” for me—something that lies above reason, feeling, and all calculation.

How can I achieve this? I tune into the environment and it influences me, showing me that it’s worthwhile to do this. This way, there is a benefit, after all, but it is of a different sort: It is evoked by the environment instead of coming from my own considerations. Then, while being under the social influence, I receive the realization of the goal’s importance from it.

Without this importance I would not be able to work, but it is built on preferring bestowal over reception. I would not be able to do this by myself. Only the environment can obligate me and change my values so much that I will nevertheless desire this.

That’s what it means to accept “the yoke of heaven.” This is impossible to do without an environment that builds the appropriate value system inside of me. In addition, I work above reason, above the rational approach, above logic.

It would seem: Why should I bestow? What will this give me? I cannot explain to my egoistic desire that bestowal is worth a thing. How will I feel better? Fine, if I would see at least some kind of potential benefit, then I would agree to it, but here we are talking about a real “burden,” where I have no justification for this work in any way. However, the group helps me to realize its importance and then I nevertheless work.

Without this importance I would not be able to work. I would not be able to devote even a tiny bit of attention to bestowal. That is why the group as a means is as important to me as the goal.
[35822]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/11, Writings of Rabash

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Question: In the past several weeks, we have seen how in several countries people came out to demonstrate against their governments as if they were protesting their inability to take part in the governing of their country. How can we hand Kabbalistic ideas about integral unity to them so that they feel that it can offer a solution?

Answer: It is a very important question that is gradually becoming more and more vital these days. It is a question of unity that people essentially demand. In other words, a person asks: “How can I, a regular man who lives on two dollars a day (as, for example, the masses in Egypt do), decide something in this life?

They can’t leave the streets and go home because otherwise, they will have to return to this life of extreme poverty, which is “valued at 2 dollars a day.” But for now, as they are protesting, they have a feeling of being able to control, to do something. They feel that power is in their hands, and not in the hands of the government.

This demand cannot be met by adding one extra dollar a day for their needs. It is necessary to think about what to give these millions of people so they may feel that they have received the power to govern and make changes. And today, it is a truly universal, global problem, which is beginning to involve greater and greater masses of people in the world.

The governments start to ponder: What should they do? Political leaders are willing to resign from their positions and yield to various changes, but it will never satisfy their people. We are yet to see numerous demonstrations and revolts, until the decision will finally come to the surface: We must ensure that the very last, simplest person gets to feel that he, too, is in charge, and that he has honor, power, and self-respect.

Humans grew up! They are coming out into the streets and feel they own the situation. When they feel this way, it is impossible to bribe them even with money because such status won’t be enough for them. And they will keep waking up, creating a very threatening predicament. I don’t see how the governments will be able to control them.

Even if one government replaces the other and accepts people’s representatives, then as soon as they have power, they will alienate themselves from the people. As soon as they get their hands on and start enjoying it there, at the top, a person who lives in his urban slum or remote village won’t find them as his or her representative any longer.

We are yet to see this tendency in political development in the nearest future. In the end, no other option will be available. Mankind will come to a state when it will be faced with a question: What can we do to be equal? In truth, only when everyone feels equal, a person can feel that he or she is the head of the government, makes decisions, and is important.

It doesn’t mean that one must have direct power over others, but one needs to feel like that inside. And it is possible to achieve but only through people’s unification that we are moving toward.

Sociologists are not familiar with such phenomenon yet, and they produce very careful, superficial forecasts. But I think that in those countries where this process has already started, it cannot be stopped. A government should fear a people that have already tasted their ability to change something and take charge. Until everyone feels equal with everybody else, they won’t find peace. And this is where the world is headed to.
[35613]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/2011, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

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History shows that ultimately not a single dictator brought his nation anything good, but only suffering. Thereby they pushed the world toward development. Today, however, our state is completely different: We live in a global world.

Previously, the world existed due to the very top of the pyramid, the individual personalities endowed with unlimited sovereign power, and everything run according to their word. A few hundred years ago, such rulers were still able to make beneficial decisions. But today, in a global world, if someone tries to put into practice his personal opinion, he will only acknowledge his own ignorance.

It’s because in a global world, decisions cannot be made by a single ruler or government, or even by governments gathering together. Nothing will come out of it! One has to be familiar with the general system, while a president is not; he is a bigger egoist than anyone else (this is why he became a president in the first place).

Hence, not a single ruler or government will be successful: They will come to power, keep hold of it for a few years, and fall. This will happen throughout the world. We will see that governments will degenerate more and more. One day millions will come out onto the streets, as it is happening in Egypt now, and the government will collapse.

Why can’t the government defend itself, where is the army? Its glory days are over, it doesn’t work this way anymore because the world manifests as an integral, global system, and the people below no longer obediently accept everything that the ruler says from above.

Today the world operates based on different principles, while we do not acknowledge this yet. No rulers will help us, no matter who comes into power. In previous times, the rulers advanced the world through suffering, yet they nevertheless advanced it. For instance, Alexander the Great wanted to introduce Greek culture into the entire world and had scientists and advisers assist him. He had an entire program of what he wanted to do with the world. But today, advancement due to a ruler is no longer possible.
[35084]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/11/2011, “The Freedom”

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The question that just won’t be silenced and has to be answered with a “blow to the jaw” is the question of who’s more important: me or the Creator? Me or the neighbor? The force of bestowal or the force of reception?

If this question stands clearly before me and I understand that whether I will progress or get into a fiasco depends on my getting a clear answer, then the need for the constant support of the environment becomes obvious to me. But on the other hand, what is that environment? And what kind of support does it give me? In essence I receive my own Kelim, desires, to the degree I want to bring them closer to me. After all, all of reality is me.

By working with the environment, I raise it in my eyes and in it I find the importance of the Creator. In essence I have been given the force of the breaking so it would help me work on myself in this way.

My “I,” which includes all of reality, divides into two parts:

1. the part that I experience as myself
2. the part that I experience as the world, other people, and everything that is outside of me.

Why did the creator break me in two? It was in order to make it easier for me to correct the part that is outside. I raise its importance in my eyes by awakening the importance of the friends and motivating them to work on me as if they have freedom of choice or more independence than I attribute to them.

We have to understand that the force of the breaking acts for our own good. The part called “the neighbor,” meaning everything that is outside of me, will be corrected by me if I treat it precisely as the neighbor. I correct these desires which seem foreign to me by placing myself in front of them and wishing to unite with them.

My “self” is just the point in the heart, while “the neighbor” is my entire Kli, the entire vessel of the soul. If I weren’t divided into these two parts, then I would not have the opportunity to correct the “external” desires. I would never be able to analyze, check, and sort them, or to demand the forces to work with them.

However, I am located outside of them and correct my attitude to them. This is the illusion I get—as if I correct my attitude to the neighbor by the principle of “love your neighbor as yourself.” And I do not yet perceive, understand, or feel that in essence, this is my soul. I was given the force of the breaking, which depicts a deceptive picture of “others” in my eyes. But that is exactly how I can start correcting my Kelim, working against the force of repulsion by striking it, blow by blow.

Thus, it is possible to imagine our work this way: A person initially receives all of creation in the capacity of his soul and understands that all the forces of disunity are a fantasy intended to confuse him. In actuality, reality is not cut off from him at all. That is why a person strikes and “blunts the teeth” of this force of the breaking, this illusion. He should see this as the entire work that he has to carry out.

And he keeps going until he knocks out all the teeth, plucks out all the weeds so the rose growing among them, so Malchut would bloom in its real form, full force. This is the Shechina, the common soul.

It is in this light that I have to see the environment, the friends, and the Creator. Everything that seems external to me is an inseparable part of me. The force separating me from the only thought and desire, from the Only One, is the force of disunity that I must break.
[35489]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/16/11, Writings of Rabash

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In his article “The Freedom,” Baal HaSulam writes that according to the plan of the upper governance, a person must live in a society and follow its laws. And the law of the life of society is to “take after the collective.”

But does it really mean that one has to comply with the most primitive, ignorant, uncivilized masses, which prevail in the world? In many countries up to this day, people live exactly as they lived hundreds of years ago. They haven’t even been impacted by the technological progress that much; they learned to use only its external benefits and didn’t receive any internal changes from it, no internal culture.

In truth, however, the law to “take after the collective” obligates us to work namely on the collective fostering of the whole world. After all, the world needs to be elevated to the level where everyone will understand that perfection is reached only through total unification. And we don’t have a choice: It’s impossible to instill this by force from above, by some small group of people who wish to make a revolution.

In former times, the world lived under the power of its rulers, but that time is gone. That is how humanity existed during the period of exile. But now, as we are entering the era of correction, the epoch of the “future generation,” it is impossible to live by the old ways.

In the near future we will see that the masses will be increasingly decisive in making decisions, while state leaders and governments will only follow the people. After all, the world has become global.

Therefore, it is necessary to apply all our effort to educating the broad masses so as to raise them to the degree of the final correction regardless of their current level. And indeed, people don’t need to learn some complicated sciences; they only need to know how to relate to each other correctly. On the contrary, connection between people is established not by way of the mind, but through the heart. It is the wisdom of the heart.

The law to “take after the collective” means that we have to turn to the majority, and it is from these simple broad masses that all changes will come, and not from those who possess power, wealth, and scientific degrees. Sages said: “The Torah will come forth from the children of the poor.”

Transformation depends precisely on the degree to which we will raise our collective spiritual vessel (Kli).
[35089]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/11/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: Does my intention depend on the intention of the entire environment and the intention of the environment on my intention?

Answer: Definitely! It says in Shamati #225: One cannot raise oneself above one’s circle. Hence, [if one wishes to advance] one must suck from one’s environment. And one has no other counsel, except through much work and Torah. Therefore, if one chooses for oneself a good environment, one saves time and efforts, since one is drawn according to one’s environment.

This is clear. If I receive energy from the environment—and the fact is that I receive everything in order to ascend from it—then I will ascend only inasmuch as I receive from them. I cannot be above this level.

Question: How can I see my environment as great if I do not see my friends as great?

Answer: Therein lies the entire problem. Who do you consider great? There is no one great in your world. Meaning, the world was not created for you. Then what means will you use to advance? The Creator is concealed. The environment is small. You have no one to advance toward and you are alone in the whole world. That is how you feel.

In principle, everyone feels this way and this is what we have to change.

From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/11, The Zohar

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