In the News (from Itogi.ru): “Social inequality is killing us, and in the literal sense of the word. It is known that long-lived and healthy people do not live in wealthy countries, but where there is more trust in relationships between people. Scientists found an explanation for this phenomenon.

“Studying the health of people, we can learn about the structure of society, and studying the structure of society, we can learn about health: The higher the social contrasts in the country, the greater the difference in mortality between the top and the bottom layers of society. For example, in Glasgow, life expectancy for the lower classes is 54 years, and for the elite it is 82. And in Finland, where the gap is small, the difference in mortality between the upper and lower ranks is only two, not three times greater.

“But most surprisingly, in the countries where the general level of socio-economic inequality is low, everyone lives longer: both the lower and the upper classes, and the overall health of the people there is much better. Inequality is bad not only for those at the ‘bottom,’ but also for those at the ‘top.’ Where society is more homogeneous in social terms, all its members have more opportunities to control and predict their own lives.

“The rules of social interaction should be clear to everyone and recognized as fair. If the lower strata of society and the elite perceive the established order as unfair and dishonest, then in this situation, stress is guaranteed to virtually all parts of the hierarchy: the middle, the lower, and the higher. And the increasing nationwide mortality is but a reflection of this state of affairs.”

Comment: Based on this research, it is clear how balance, in this case, in terms of social homogeneity and consent, gets the society out of the crises of disease, death, and depression.
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Question: You said that we should not set any laws and should not change anything in the systems existing today in human society, but we should only focus on one thing so that everything that we do would be for the good of the integral humanity?

Answer: At first, it may be to benefit a small circle: first, for the good of the group, then the country, then the world; this happens gradually as humanity develops.

However, pay attention that we are not forcing anyone! Everything happens according to the rate of our development. We will not be creating the KGB here as was done in Russia where they tried to build a just society with coercion. We are achieving changes in the person who sees it as a necessity for advancement. We have no choice. Either we get closer to an atomic war and the complete destruction of the world (although today it is already crumpling without any wars), or we change ourselves in the direction of the good! There are only two ways, and we are at the crossroads.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 8, 1/5/12

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Question: I feel that all the systems of society and the world are corrupted, and by participating in them, we become its partners. Would not our connection with society, involuntarily involve us in these systems and interfere with our correction, which we must realize? Were the Kabbalistic groups that lived earlier separated from the corrupt systems of society? Shouldn’t we live separately as a society of correction? Or will it be a regression and sever connections?

Answer: We can correct ourselves only by helping others! The corruption of the world was set initially in order for us to feel it, become aware of it, and find the way to correct it. Correction means bringing everyone into a single integral system; read what Baal HaSulam writes about it.

Question: What is needed for you to visit South Africa in the near future?

Answer: This is what is needed: the group is waiting for me there, students, and many people who are ready to hear me. If you have this, I am ready!
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Looking at ourselves, we see that we are spoiled. We don’t have a very good life. Our qualities, habits, and character traits are not very comfortable. We are not satisfied with each other, and we are not very satisfied with ourselves.

This situation can be compared to an unripe apple on a branch, small, wrinkled, sour and having an unpleasant smell. However, gradually, it grows and ripens.

Someone who does not know would not have seen the benefit of this whole process. Really, why does a worthless fruit absorb minerals, vitamins, water, and oxygen?

It is only at the very end that the apple suddenly fills with color, exudes a pleasant aroma and sparkles so with its juicy plumpness. Now, having ripened, it looks opposite to its intermediate states of ripening.

So, perhaps we also are developing in an analogous way? Perhaps, we simply cannot see it because we end our lives without waiting for “maturity” when each one will become wise, wonderful, and noble, in other words, a good person.

Perhaps, in contrast to an apple or an animal, we develop from generation to generation. Each generation is higher and more progressive than the previous one. This would mean that it is impossible to inscribe this process into the framework of one particular life.

Evidently, all of our development throughout thousands of years is similar to the life of one person who develops ever more and more. It seems that, in the end, we will arrive at a wonderful, ripened state.

Apparently, our development moves according to such a scheme. As the saying goes, “Do not show a fool unfinished work.” Since a smart person differs from a fool in that he sees the “newborn” and in advance he knows what the ending will be, and so he can justify the process that we are going through.

However, we do not see the ending, and that is why it is difficult for us to justify our current states. Indeed, our path is very sorrowful and difficult. We are moving forward only by unfortunate blows, problems, and personal mistakes.
[70629]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 10, 1/8/12

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Until now, humanity has moved forward somehow. However, today, it seems to be at a crossroad, if not an impasse. We are lost in the desert and do not know where to go.

Here, we have to learn from nature of which we are a part. Nature strives for balance, but, for us, balance with nature means the similarity of properties. Since we are developing, let us see what the general force of nature is, where it goes, what it wants, and what it changes in us.

Here, we can say that our development might be good. We are aware of our evil, our egoism. Becoming greater egoists, we understand with more clarity how bad it is, how much we poison life for ourselves and for others.

I try to succeed at the expense of others, to use them, get ahead of them in power and wealth, and rule over them. Perhaps, all this hits me like a boomerang because eventually we see what kind of society we have built and how humanity appears with its wisdom, greatness, wealth, and splendor. Look at where we have arrived; this is not where we wanted to come.

What is the cause of all this evil? Why do we repeatedly make mistakes and end up with nothing? We are always pursuing some goal, believing that it will bring us good fortune. Then, we switch to the next target with the same hopes, but, in the end, we always meet with a bad ending, frustration, and even a dramatic development of events in the form of wars, epidemics and other disasters.

The problem is the following: If we compare ourselves with other levels of nature, the still, vegetative, and animate, we see that they develop, if they develop at all, very slowly. In reality, they nearly stand still and live according to instincts, the orders of nature that are inherent in them and which they perform.

Studying a cow, ape, horse, dog, or cat, we see that they act in strict accordance with their nature, deviating neither to the right nor the left, and they never make mistakes. An animal has its inner laws, and it is designed to comply with them. On the other hand, a human being constantly makes mistakes, which obviously should initiate a rational development because our advantage above the animate world is the ability to reason.

From generation to generation, we were developing our intellect, education, knowledge of the world, nature, and ourselves. This means that we perhaps are not using our intellect correctly, and that is our problem. If we turn to more ancient times, we would understand why the subject of the human mind was raised by the ancient sages, such as Aristotle and Plato who founded modern science.

They advised not to reveal science to anyone, and to trust it only to decent people who would use it correctly, exclusively for the benefit of human life, for the sake of good relations between people, so that they would live better and more comfortably. If you give science to whoever wants it, then, in essence, you do a disservice to humanity.

An average person, driven by his egoism, uses science to the detriment of others as well as to his own because it will hit him like a boomerang. Those people eventually destroy the environment, driving all of humanity to produce weapons and other things that are not necessary. Today, we see that the great opportunities offered by science can provide us with everything; however, we use it for evil.

As a result, we face a comprehensive crisis that covers all areas and levels of our life. It covers science, education, the institution of the family, relationships between spouses, between parents and children, and in general among all people, our health, future, and culture.

In what are we interested? With what do we fill ourselves? It is with the fruits of the media. This position does not correspond to what we are capable of theoretically. We use our abilities incorrectly.

Thus, we have continued for generations, for the thousands of years that have passed since Plato and Aristotle who warned against the transfer of scientific knowledge to anyone without discrimination. They urged us to trust only those people who knew how to apply knowledge correctly and would invent only necessary and useful things.

Possessed by the evil inclination, people always want to use science to gain power over others, for the development of weapons and medications that are not necessary but are for personal enrichment, and, generally, for all kinds of things that are seemingly necessary, but in reality are absolutely needless. These scientists sell science and their inventions only to make money.

Honest scientists are motivated by love for science and nothing more, as it is written, “Buy truth and do not sell wisdom, instruction or understanding.” As a result, we see that we have completely lost our way in the desert for thousands of years of our development, and thus we have come to this.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 10, 1/8/12

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When we look around, we see the evil in our development. We can assume that we also had a chance to develop in a better way, to walk on two legs, meaning to expose a bit of the evil and then get back on the right track, and then back again, over and over. All we need is to fulfill the recognition of evil and its hidden parts correctly, to advance step by step, to realize our mistakes and to immediately correct them. Like a child who is allowed to break apart a toy so that he will learn to put the broken toy back together. We allow him to do something wrong so that he will understand what is right.

It’s exactly the same here. We must change our attitude and understand that our life is organized in such a way that evil is necessary. But let’s start learning its essence, getting to know our ego, learning the wrong use that we make with the options that we have especially in technology, science, in the potential that is above the animate level, on the human level.

If we use all our treasures correctly while constantly checking what is right and wrong, we’ll be able, based on this test, to switch from evil to good every time. We’ll develop in alternating phases of shrinking and expanding, like the organs in our body: the respiratory system, the heart, etc. It is also like a bicycle wheel that has one part moving forward while the other moves backward. In every development there are two forces that operate in harmony and complete one another.

There is no need to destroy anything in our world. Until now our development was forced and essential. From now on we should have a more critical approach to what is happening. We should analyze everything that happens now wisely and draw conclusions about the future and, time after time, follow that way of corrections. Then all the evil turns into an important assistance. We use both forces in order to advance. Actually there is no good or bad. These two forces are like reins that help us move forward.

Suddenly we begin to understand that all our egoistic nature is actually good because, thanks to it, we’ve developed the ability to analyze and correct ourselves. From now on, by our correct mutual actions, we will move fast forward, like a locomotive towards the goal, until we become a “ripe apple,” a prosperous flourishing society in which there are good relations.
[70620]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 10, 1/8/12

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Once, humanity was touched by spiritual unity. We are talking about the people of Israel who were connected by brotherly ties and were all friends in the days preceding the exile when the Temple still existed. Then, we were all brothers living perfectly in mutual connection and mutual participation.

But, then the Temple was destroyed because of unfounded hatred. As usual, in the course of development, the egoistic desire suddenly grew in this nation, and it fell from the degree of brotherly love to the degree of unfounded hatred, becoming even worse than other nations who were not bound by brotherly love and did not experience this fall. Since then, this nation became rejected and peculiar. So far, it cannot find a place and rest.

Hence we can see that human hate towards this nation obviously is a reflection of the law of nature. This hate towards the representatives of Israel and Israel as a whole can be found everywhere. The reason is that these people should be the first ones to return to the corrected state, to brotherly love, to rise from the unfounded hatred stretching for two thousand years of exile, to unity and by this set an example for all the rest. They must realize what they had before because this perhaps makes them unique and different in the eyes of others.

The world needs this good example because it does not know how to get out of the crisis. And we, the sons of Israel, are in a specific state: We reveal the method of correction for all of humanity and we need to demonstrate brotherly love, the realization of the principle of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” We need to show humanity that precisely in this way all the people will come out of the desert they are lost in to a beautiful and wonderful life.

We have been entrusted with an enormous, unique, and very important task. There is no challenge greater and better than the one that we face now.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 10, 1/8/12

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The more the goal of attaining bestowal unto the Creator is important to us, so should the work of creating the collective vessel and attaining bestowal unto friends be important. Thus, we will have to turn to the Creator in prayer (MAN), in order for Him to give us the force of bestowal, the will to bestow, the ability to connect amongst us and attain bestowal.

In a group, a person learns how friends should be treated, how to bond with them. When he “buys” friends for himself, he raises a prayer for them, receives strength from them, assistance. We need to attain cohesion with the Creator, as His partners, in equality and mutual love; one needs to attain that state with the friends in order to reveal what it is.

Surely, the will to receive and our initial nature despise this business. Yet, we will have to engage in it because other than that, there is no meaning to our reality, our life. For that purpose, we are born and exist on the beastly level, in the meantime, in order to reach correction.

Hence, it turns out that the friends are no less important than the Creator. And creating the collective vessel is equal to attaining the goal of Creation, attaining the love and cohesion.

We need to realize the immense power found within the group, and that is the only means to attain the goal of Creation, meaning, the attribute of bestowal. That is what our inner, personal work in the group is devoted to, and similarly, the external work relating to the entire world.

The whole world is also suffering. The question of “What is the purpose of my life?” leads each one of us to a group at some stage to study Kabbalah, and to a teacher, obligating us to study. Likewise, the entire world is seeking the meaning to its lost life, and nature is uniting us coercively into a group, an integral, global world. Whether people want it or not, they are beginning to feel they are interdependent.

Therefore, there’s not a big difference between what our groups are going through and what the whole world is enduring. Certainly, there is a difference in the pace, conditions and exposing the material; yet, the more we advance forward, we’ll be more similar, simply like twins. Our small group (those hundreds of thousands of friends belonging to it) will grow closer and closer to that large group comprised of seven billion people alive in the world, thus, we’ll reach a closer understanding of the goal.

Of course, every person does that in accordance with his degree and perception, but everyone, with no exception, must attain the importance of the “friends,” meaning, from the state in which one sees the other people as strangers to attaining the love of brothers toward all and loving each one “as himself.”
[68558]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/2/12, Writings of Rabash

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In the News (from Examiner): “According to NASA, as reported by National Geographic, an iceberg the size of New York City is about to break off of Antarctica’s fastest melting glacier. The ice crack measures 350 square miles, which is more than the 303 square miles that covers all five boroughs in the city. … It isn’t known when the iceberg is going to break off, but the educated guess is sometime within the next few months.

“Normally icebergs breaking off isn’t such an issue as it is in this case, but in this case, scientists are seeing a difference in how the ice breaks off, suggesting that the ice itself is changing. The ice breaking off in this way will contribute all the more toward the sea level rising in the area. Another factor which is raising the eyebrows of experts is where the iceberg is in comparison with the rest of the continent. The shifts in the ice in these particular glaciers (in West Antarctica, specifically the Pine Island Glacier, where the crack is specifically) will contribute to the broken off icebergs raising the sea level that much faster.”

(From IBTIMES TV): “Scientists have long suspected icebergs to have a link with earthquakes. When the huge March 11 earthquake triggered the Tohoku Tsunami in Japan that flattened entire coastal towns and killed nearly 16,000, scientists knew that tracking the wave could provide visual proof of the connection. The undersea megathrust earthquake had a staggering magnitude of 9.0 (Mw), and triggered waves of up to 133 feet high. Scientists were able to track the wave over 8,000 miles as it sprawled through the Pacific and Southern oceans. Just 18 hours after the tsunami, a wave of 1-foot height struck the ice shelf in Antarctica. The Sulzberger ice shelf is a sheet of ice 260 feet thick that extends towards New Zealand. It hasn’t budged in nearly 50 years, but the pressure from the wave was strong enough to snap off massive pieces of ice. One of them measured four by six miles in surface area, nearly the size of Manhattan.”

My Comment: Climatic problems, which are the result of our imbalance with nature, are the most tragic. So far, we underestimate our impact on nature: We believe that we inflict harm by exhaust and garbage, but in fact, our spiritual non-compliance with nature causes the most devastating and direct impact on it. Our egoistic relationships are responsible for major imbalances in nature and are the cause of all crises and climate challenges.
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In the News (from Google News): “Hundreds of thousands of people, many waving red and white union flags, protested across Spain on Sunday against sweeping labour market reforms that make it easier to slash pay and lay off workers….

“Union officials said 500,000 people hit the streets in Madrid, 400,000 in Barcelona, 150,000 in Valencia and 50,000 in Seville.”

My Comment: This is only the beginning of the protests. They can be stopped by other reforms: by the fair distribution of income and the transition of the economy into reasonable limits. But this can be only implemented under the condition of educating all the population with explanatory programs for everyone.
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