A question I received: If a person who is a judge by profession starts to study Kabbalah, should he change the criteria he applies in his work?

My Answer: He should practice law according to the laws of his country and the norms accepted by his society. The earthly judgment will remain in place until society will rise to the level of heavenly judgment.

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A question I received: What is the idea behind correction? What corrects me?

My Answer: Correction is when you attain the quality of “faith above reason,” where faith is the force of bestowal that’s above our egoistic nature, and “faith above reason” is when you want to use this force to bond with others. You then forget about yourself and rise above this world.

People can and will have to accept this condition in order to rise above their nature, because this is the law of existence in an integral, interconnected system. This system is similar to the human body or the whole universe, where everything is connected to and depends on everything.

In a closed system, everyone depends on everyone else. If someone does something bad, it means that others made him do it. The offender has no freedom of choice because he follows the example set for him by others. Therefore, if someone behaves badly, then it’s my fault, not his.

Knowing this, a person can step out of his egoistic rationality and enter irrationality. Why? It’s because the human level is higher than the animate one, and therefore the only way to ascend to the human level is to reject your present rationality and accept the higher irrationality. One must accept bestowal above reason (meaning, above one’s egoism) and connect to others according to the rule, “love your neighbor as yourself.”

This is the rational form of life for a human being, because a human being is someone who is connected to everyone in the society. Today, however, we don’t have a society, because humanity is not a society. We call it a “civilization,” which means that everyone lives together, but everyone tries to infringe on others. Human society, on the other hand, is when all people are connected together.

This is the stumbling block of the politicians and financiers today. They are looking for a regulator on the animate level, and this approach will lead them to greater failures until people will separate from each other altogether.

Today people already recognize that the lack of connection between them is evil. But they still don’t understand that the only way to create a connection is for each person to rise above his egoism. We will eat only if everyone will desire to spoon-feed each other.

So, the only solution is to organize our environment better. The mass media and upbringing have to transmit the Light that will gradually change people. The society will then reach a pragmatic understanding that we all have to play the game of bestowal and love, displaying these qualities to one another. This is the only way to change ourselves, and without it, we simply won’t survive. Our salvation lies in the environment’s ability to influence every one of us.

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A question I received: Why must humanity be awakened? Why can’t it wake up on its own?

My Answer: Humanity is waking up on its own, but only when pushed by blows. This is how we have developed over the course of our entire history. Until now this was the only way for us to develop because our only quality was egoistic and we were forced to make progress by the suffering we felt inside our egoism.

Now, however, we have reached a state where another quality is awakening in us – the quality of bestowal. This gives us a new chance to develop – not only through the blows we receive that “push” us from behind, but also through our aspiration forward, toward the quality of bestowal. If we aspire forward in this way, we can avoid blows and suffering. We will then reduce the time it take us to develop and reach the designated goal – equivalence with the Creator – through a pleasant, comfortable path.

This is why we disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah instead of waiting for humanity to develop on its own. The natural path of development is forced: we are pushed to develop by suffering, and along this path, it took tens of thousands of years to bring us to the current level of development.

Now that we have undergone this development, we are preparing our children for life in the modern world. During the first 20 years of their lives, we impart onto them all the knowledge that humanity has acquired throughout history. We cram thousands of years of human progress into the child’s 20 year-long upbringing. And he in turn takes this knowledge and continues onward.

We should apply the principle of advancing down the path of positive aspiration when bringing up the new generation. This is the best way to express our love and care for them.

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A question I received: Recently you mentioned that a corrected society is like one family, where the profit earned by different corporations and industries will be used for the benefit of the entire country and the whole world. How will this affect our lives? Will the whole country work for the sake of the whole world?

My Answer: We are not talking about this kind of a connection among countries yet. However, Baal HaSulam says that this model can be built in one country. All the corporations that exist in that country and all the people living there would work according to the principle of brotherhood, without the aim of receiving a profit. In other words, people would work and then contribute their profits to the country’s common treasury, and the sages that head the country will determine how to distribute the surplus in the best way possible.

The law is very simple: each person receives exactly as much as he needs for a normal life. And it does not matter if we are talking about a single person or a huge enterprise.

In the article, “The Future Generation,” Baal HaSulam writes that we should first create a small organization whose majority will be altruists. This organization would include all the forms of government, and gradually the entire world will join it. This organization will be like the central point of the world, surrounded by nations and governments, and everyone will have one program and one leadership.

If you have trouble envisioning this, then just think of the whole of humanity as one family. This is what Nature demands of us. Our task is to organize ourselves in this manner as quickly as possible, and to explain to everyone that this is for our own benefit. This is the aim of Kabbalah’s dissemination around the world.

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A question I received: I don’t understand what will happen to society during the period of its transition from the will to receive to the will to bestow. People will no longer be satisfied by money or power, but they won’t yet know what bestowal is.  What will push or motivate people to make acts of bestowal? How will people be able to desire it without receiving any pleasure from this idea?

My Answer: People will feel fulfilled because society will encourage them to bestow. Society will respect and reward a person for his bestowal, and this will fulfill him. The goal of our development is to reach an interpersonal connection among us where just the sensation of this connection will give us the fuel to bestow and love.

At the end of the day, what a person really wants is not just money in the bank, success or power, but inner fulfillment, or a certain attitude towards him from society. All the pleasures that are above and beyond our vital, physical necessities are perceived as intangible, virtual fulfillment.

In addition, there is something we tend to consider more precious than being fulfilled by money, and that is the fulfillment we sense from the respect and recognition of society. This is what the rich and the powerful want as well, but they can’t get it, because when they do attain respect and recognition, it is false, attained through bribery.

The worst thing for a person to experience is criticism, humiliation and contempt from the society and from one’s own children. This is worse than death itself. The opposite of this are the qualities of respect, recognition and appreciation; these give us the greatest fulfillment in life.

Our task is to nurture a public opinion that will compel every person to change, to go from receiving from society to bestowing to society. Everyone will then feel the reward that comes from the opportunity to give to society.

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What does it mean to be a guarantor? If I am someone’s guarantor, then if that person breaks the law, the authorities can come to me and put me in jail instead of him, because I have taken on the obligation to be that person’s guarantor!

Or let’s say that person doesn’t pay off a loan that he took out from the bank. Without even talking to him, the bank can demand the loan payment from me. That’s the law of mutual guarantee in action. It is Nature’s unbreakable law that binds us together, and we can’t run away from it.

How unfair, how cunningly devious and cruel it is for Nature to put people who hate each other in a closed space and give them horrible desires and impulses. And then to go and punish one person instead of the other! If we could actually feel this law, we would literally burst with indignation.

Moreover, I may be held responsible not only for the consequence of someone else’s actions, but for the fact that he committed them in the first place. In other words, the fact that someone destroys, murders, steals and rapes is my fault, and that’s why it is just to demand compensation from me and to punish me. The guarantee is not that you have to compensate the damage done by someone else, but that you have to guarantee that his deeds will be good. And if he acted poorly, that means I was an accomplice to his actions.

It turns out that by making any small transgression, I cause the misdoings of many people around the world. And this will definitely come back to me – I will be punished. We can’t even imagine how absolutely the law of mutual guarantee envelops us and works without our consent. It is everywhere – even in our thoughts, intentions and actions.

Each one of us is “guiding” others throughout their lives, similar to a puppet master who leads and controls the puppet. However, none of us feels that he is the one who leads and is being led. If we would see our mutual dependence, we would lose our freedom of will and become robots. This is why our universal mutual connection is concealed from us and is being revealed gradually, to the extent we can bear it and turn it into a positive one.

How can we make it positive? It is done by each one of us connecting to other people. However, this shouldn’t be done out of fear or because of pressure, but out of our own, free desire to give and to love others.

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A question I received: The equality you are describing sounds more like oppression. If every person receives the same as everyone, this will suppress people’s initiative to give more to others. What good does such equality bring?

My Answer: Man lives inside the will to receive, to be filled. This desire is the essence of creation, the only thing that was created, and it doesn’t change. All that changes is the intention, the purpose, or how you use this desire – “for my sake” or “for the sake of others.”

Let’s say I have an eight-digit amount of dollars in my bank account. What makes me feel satisfied is the sense that I have a lot of money, rather the amount itself. It gives me the sensation of power and of confidence about the future and the present. However, man’s desire cannot be filled with the dollars themselves.

Our desires are strictly formed within us by nature, and they are of two types:

• Bodily desires – for food, sex and family
• Social desires – for wealth, fame, power, and knowledge

Either way, our fulfillment always comes from our sensations, and never from the material objects.

If a person receives society’s appreciation, honor and awards, and if his children are proud of him (instead of hearing that their father is despised by the society), then wouldn’t this be enough incentive for that person to work for the benefit of society?

A true expert sees his job as a work of art, a craft. He does this work in order to achieve the end result, and not to be rewarded. This is how he satisfies his desire.

What we’ve done is to wrap people’s desire into the “wrapping” of money. This is why money comes from the word “covering” or “screen” (in Hebrew the word for “money” is Kessef, originating from the word Kissui – covering). However, money is just a provisional measure of the desire’s fulfillment.

The current crisis will eliminate all the superficial kinds of compensation, leaving just the pure fulfillment. What is that? It is the satisfaction that comes from bestowal. This is the only fulfillment that does not disappear and is completely supported by the society.

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A question I received: There is a surge in organized crime today. How will the judicial system work in a corrected society? How will crime be fought there?

My Answer: If psychologists and Kabbalists organize a correct society, where everyone is influenced by the environment, then this influence will make every person act in a way that’s opposite to his egoistic nature.

This will work because every person seeks fame, acceptance and appreciation, while loathing disgrace. In addition, one is consumed by envy of others. By putting these impulses to correct use, we can help people act in a socially desirable way.

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In the News (from CNN): Rapid-fire TV news bulletins or getting updates via social-networking tools such as Twitter could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering, scientists say. “If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states and that would have implications for your morality,” said researcher Mary Helen Immordino-Yang. … the study raises questions about the emotional cost, particularly for young people, of heavy reliance on a torrent of news snippets delivered via TV and online feeds such as Twitter.

My Comment: This is exactly where the problems of our youth come from. This is the impact of TV programs that are intended to appeal to purely superficial thinking, rather than the more conscious level.

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A question I received: What kind of government will be more likely to undertake this experiment of creating a future society – one that already has memories of socialism, or on the contrary, one that is already fed up with capitalism?

My Answer: I think that it does not depend on the physical status of the government, but on how conditioned people are to perceive the cause of the crisis and the need to ascend above it, to overcome it by uniting, and to understand that today, there is no other means to survive.

And like Baal HaSulam says, this method can work in any country (though not necessarily in the whole world). However, it depends on the level of people’s perception, or their level of development. For it to work, people must already have a realization or an understanding that there is no other way out from our situation, and this is the only means to survival. However, it should not happen by intruding into one’s personal life or by coercing the masses, the way it happened when the Soviet power was established.

The society itself should be convinced that the old conceptions, decisions, approaches and regulators do not work any longer. This could happen first in America, then Russia, and then Europe. However, I do not think this pertains to technologically and socially undeveloped countries, as well as to countries ruled by dictatorship and “people’s” regimes. These countries still lack the necessary level of public development and awareness. They will accept this principle after the developed countries, in part because they will be forced to participate in this for economic and social reasons.

I believe that an international fund and a single world government, even if  formed reluctantly, will create a movement toward collaboration by setting their own example and exerting moral pressure. After all, humanity is organized according to a pyramid: a part of humanity is already able to realize the importance of integral development, while other parts can only join in by realizing that there is no other way. However, according to the law of Nature, eventually everyone will have to reach complete harmony and become equal to all of Nature.

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