Most people want just one thing: to feel good. Their purpose is a good, worry-free life: to have a job, a bank account, a social life and medical insurance. They want to have a home with a good supply of electricity and water, a supermarket nearby, and other services. They want their children to receive a good upbringing, and for everything to work like clockwork. This is what they want.

Therefore, their correction occurs through joining others by hearing about the connection between people on the material level. They are separated and they have no other opportunity to unite. However, with time, they will begin to understand that mutual compromise and mutual bestowal hold something much greater than what they initially hoped to receive.

Besides a bank account, medical insurance, a pension, and a paycheck, there is a higher level to life, and it can be felt by every person! When a person feels the Upper Force of Nature, the flow of the eternal life, then everything that happens to him or her before entering this world, everything in this life, and everything that will happen afterwards merge together into one reality. A person then reveals the hidden part of the universe and both parts unite.

People will begin to understand this as a consequence of their unification, because they’ll receive a minor luminance of Light precisely from the unification. However, this will happen at the next stage. For now, we are only concerned with unification, which is necessary in order to live well on the simple, corporeal level. That’s it – there is nothing more! What does it even mean to “live well”? It means you will have anything you desire!
(From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “One Precept,” on 03.08.2009)

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Three questions I received on daily life and Kabbalah study:

Question: I started watching the morning lessons, but my day has become disorganized. I can’t combine good sleep, the morning lessons, dissemination, the group, and reading of books. 24 hours a day just doesn’t seem enough for it all. What is your advice for structuring the day and prioritizing things?

My Answer: You should go to bed a couple of hours earlier. For example, I go to bed at 9 or even 8:30 p.m. and sleep until 2 a.m. So, go to bed as soon as you get home. And when you’re at the dissemination center, don’t waste even a minute on idle chatter.

Question: Why do some students of Bnei Baruch believe they should purposefully increase their egoism? Where does this confusion come from?

My Answer: It’s because they don’t understand that one has to keep aspiring toward bestowal and love by working in the group. During this work, if one’s egoism towards the friends increases, then this is the egoism he must correct in order to rise above it to the Creator. On the other hand, the original egoism that one has is just animalistic and it doesn’t relate to the Creator.

Question: What “fuel” should we run on to travel the distance from the recognition of evil to crossing the Machsom? And how can I speed up this process?

My Answer: You can do this only by means of the correct environment. See the article, “The Freedom.”

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The Path of Kabbalah: “About the Study”
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Two questions I received about studying in groups:

Question: A few months ago we formed a virtual group, consisting of various territories, including Germany, Estonia, Israel, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Tell us, is it necessary to separate the virtual group into male and female parts when reading Baal HaSulam’s and Rabash’s articles?

My Answer: No, it’s not necessary. It should happen only by consent.

Question: Our group has a great desire to reveal the inner connection between us. Some people aim to strengthen our connection with each other, while others aim to demonstrate the nuances of the correct inner examination in order for the group to advance. Others still just try to feel the desire for a positive attitude and the right focus. However, we were told that these tactics impede the progress. If this is the case, why then do we feel a need to do this, which we shouldn’t? Is this a normal phase in our development?

My Answer: I don’t understand exactly what you mean. No one is against connections within or between groups. Could it be that you are doing something that isolates you from others? If so, you will be violating the principle of equality and the general connection. Please describe the problem to me in more detail.

We strive to achieve unity, which Nature (the Creator) demands from us and from all of humanity. The unity must happen among the entire mass of people studying in the framework of the worldwide Bnei Baruch group. This is no one’s whim or invention; everything that’s studied is a law of Nature, and the students apply it to whatever extent they can. Therefore, there are no leaders, but only people who explain.

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A question I received: What does it mean to learn the global system?

My Answer: Speak with system specialists and they will tell you about the laws that govern a closed system. Speak about multifunctional systems with biologists, physiologists, computer specialists and people who work in cybernetics. I think I still have formulas from college, showing what a multifunctional system is.

There are many elements that people study in order to understand how to interconnect these elements in order to bring the entire system to operation through the mutual interaction between the elements at any given moment and in the various states that these elements strive to. Based on this, you can derive a formula, and without the formula, you won’t be able to construct anything.

Let’s say you have a submarine that has to rise from the depth of four hundred meters to two hundred meters. This isn’t easy to do. In order to do it, you must we aware of every possible factor, such as the depth and equilibrium – there are thousands of parameters you must keep in mind. And every parameter changes in a specific way depending on the depth. It’s a very difficult task.

So what do we have to do? In the same way, we have to learn what an integrated system is and why the condition of “love thy neighbor as thyself” is the law of Nature. This notion must be explained in a way that’s easy to understand, in a way that’s simple and close to ordinary people and organizations. This is what we have to understand, learn and teach.
(Excerpt from the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article “One Precept,” on 03.05.2009)

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In the News (from STV): “Global crisis sends east Germans flocking to Marx” Marx’s 1867 critical analysis of capitalism, “Das Kapital,” has risen from the publishing graveyard to become an improbable best-seller for academic publisher Karl-Dietz-Verlag. “Everyone thought there would never ever again be any demand for ‘Das Kapital’,” managing director Joern Schuetrumpf told Reuters after selling 1,500 copies so far this year, triple the number sold in all of 2007.

My Comment: Everything Marx wrote was based on Kabbalah, but he was misunderstood. See what Baal HaSulam writes about him in the newspaper, “The Nation.”  Basically, everything is happening according to Marx. But he can only be understood once people begin to understand the basic concepts of Kabbalah.

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A question I received: You are saying that nature demands that we reach the right kind of connection between us. This week hackers attacked and almost destroyed a web community, Facebook. If nature, the general system of creation, desires to establish a connection between people, why doesn’t it support this network, which reveals a connection between people?

My Answer: Maybe Facebook has exhausted itself in its current form. Instead of trying to protect Facebook from hackers, we have to change it. I believe there is a time, place, and purpose for everything. If forces of opposition are emerging, it means the phenomenon needs to change or disappear. These are just forces of influence, and there is nothing artificial in the world. We have to accept that this is how change and development take place. We shouldn’t react negatively to anything, but rather treat everything as the revelation of evil. When new states cease to emerge, it is a sign that you have reached the Final Correction. However, before that, even the worst state to be revealed isn’t bad in and of itself, but rather, it only reveals the evil to you.

This is how we should view everything. Our greatest enemies reveal the evil in us, and they are not evil on their own. Still, for now you have to eliminate them in order to have an opportunity to perform corrections in our world as quickly as possible. You must eliminate them because they don’t allow you to be corrected, and not because you hate them. You should hate them because they don’t allow you to perform the correction. Then your actions will be justified.
(From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “One Precept,” on 03.05.2009)

Related Material:
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A question I received: What kind of power balance should be established in the world? The G-20 leaders want to create a better power balance between different countries to make sure that no country will be able to control the others. How do you envision the map of the world’s power balance, when done correctly?

My Answer: I do not see this as a good situation. Any action that’s based on the human ego is ignorant of the needed inner changes in people’s relationships to each other. Therefore, even if it’s done for the sake of balance, it will lead to the recognition of evil and will manifest in a negative form. As a matter of fact, people will not otherwise recognize the evil inside themselves. If we won’t bring about a correction of interpersonal relationships, then it’s worthless to create any new regulator. It won’t help and will only bring us to a more corrupted state.

Our world is abundant: it has natural resources, developed industries, machinery, technology, economy, a banking system, and agriculture. Everything is 100% fine-tuned. We only lack a connection between us. That connection cannot be attained by means of a regulator, which the G-20 leaders hope to employ to solve our problems on the corporeal level. They are thinking, “Let’s create a special computer that will make all the right calculations.”

But the fact is, the calculations that need to be made are inside us, and they have to be done for the sake of our neighbor! What does Baal HaSulam say in the newspaper “The Nation?” He writes, “There must be fair distribution between everyone! Oil, gas, metal, and everything in the earth belongs to the whole of humanity in equal measure. You cannot have something if someone else does not, because it belongs to everyone equally!”

All the people must work for each other’s benefit, and do so willingly, rather than because of some regulator. Using a regulator to achieve this would be similar to the KGB in Russia. This has to happen because of your own desire!

So what is that point of reference we should now start with? It is education – learning where the problem comes from. There’s no need to do anything in the world except man’s inner correction! Even the climate will change because of this! We have no other way out of the situation. And the purpose of our dissemination is to make this fact known.

The G-20 leaders are like children who will gather at their summit and play it out as if they have a solution in their hands. They will then start to carry it out in the world, and it will fail just like all the previous ones did. They will all fail.

There are many programs like this now. For example, the Japanese government began giving out money to its people. But people won’t spend it; they will just save it for a rainy day. Yet the government presumes that people will immediately run to the stores to spend it. How can I spend the money if I don’t know what is going to happen to me tomorrow!?

The entire world is in a “frozen” state. Everything has come to a halt. And the only reason this is happening is because our intentions are not aimed at benefiting each other. So let us hope that we will be heard.
(From the lesson on the Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Freedom,” on 03.13.2009)

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When you reveal to someone what will happen tomorrow, whether it’s good or bad, and you direct him to the path based on your knowledge of the system which isn’t yet revealed to him, then you are like a prophet in relation to that person, because you are one step ahead of him.

What does it mean to ascend up the spiritual ladder? In our world, it means to move forward “in time.” But what is time? What does it mean that a Kabbalist accelerates and “sanctifies” the time? It means that he ascends. In other words, he has already attained the state that the world will reach several years later. This is why he speaks to the people and warns them: “Be careful!”

It’s like a labyrinth, where some people have entered the labyrinth and are lost there, but he watches them from above and directs them: “Go left, go right, now this way, then that way.” And this is how he leads them out of the labyrinth.

There are several labyrinths in the world that have been specifically designed for us. Once you enter one, you cannot find your way out, as each one is a unique kind of adventure. But our adventure has become dangerous, and those who are above, those who have already gone through this path and who know the method and the program, plan, map, or compass; those who have mastered this entire system, all its lanes and laws, and everything that happens in it – these people are called prophets in relation to everyone else.

You can’t be a guide unless you have already gone through several degrees of this path. Otherwise you will not be able to lead those who want to follow you down the same path.
(Excerpt from the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “One Precept,” on 03.18.2009)

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A question I received: On April 2, a summit of the G-20 leaders will take place in order to try to get the world out of the crisis. What can they do?

My Answer: These people can do a lot, since they have the ability to popularize their opinions. The world is in crisis, and many of these leaders understand that if all the countries will care only about themselves, this will inflict great harm to the world. Therefore, countries shouldn’t separate from each other; they must unite. However, no one knows how to do this.

“We are gathering in order to undertake something, but we are unable to do anything” – this is what they are now demonstrating to everyone. They realize that countries cannot isolate from each other, but no one knows how to solve this dilemma.

They will certainly undertake something, but at the current rate, whatever they do will quickly prove a failure and no one will understand where it all disappeared to. It will be the same as what happened to Obama’s stimulus plan.

Why does this happen? Because they are unable to account for the global law of interdependence between us, the Arvut (Mutual Guarantee).”This law states that we must now create a good connection with one another, and this can only come from understanding that everyone completely depends on everyone.

Twenty powerful people will gather, all of them leaders of nations. They cannot play around with their people anymore by lying to them and trying to calm them down because this will cause riots, starvation, and the greatest kind of turmoil. Therefore, they have to offer something to the world.

However, the regulation and harmony shouldn’t be realized on the corporeal level, but rather on the inner level – the level of connection between people. That is where the breaking occurred (the breaking of the souls), and that is how egoism came to be. Therefore, that is where we have to do the correction. This is why we have to study our current state and the state toward which Nature propels us. We have to learn how to live in our new world just like we teach this to our children.
(From the lesson on the Baal HaSulam’s article “The Freedom,” 03.13.2009)

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A question I received: What program for coming out of the crisis would you suggest to the G-20 leaders?

My Answer: Here are the two basic concepts of our program:

1) To bring people clear knowledge of the fact that we are living in a time when we cannot survive without uniting with every citizen of the world.

2) To explain Kabbalah’s main principles on a basic level: what is unification, how can we unite through mutual bestowal, what is essential to us, what is the fair distribution of the essential things, and so on.

Gradually, step-by-step, people will learn how to build the new connections while maintaining all the production and industries. The way to do this is for people to keep only what is essential to them, and to distribute the excess equally to the whole world.

These actions should start being implemented in at least one part of the world, and whoever wants to will join them, and whoever doesn’t want to, won’t. As soon as humanity begins to move in this direction, it will feel a kind attitude from Nature because it will be acting in accordance with Nature’s laws. And because humanity will be harmoniously interacting with these laws, every endeavor will bring positive results. Gradually, by following the new feelings and knowledge, the world will advance.
(From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “One Precept,” on 03.08.2009)

Related Material:
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