Questions I received on how work combines with Kabbalah:

Question: Many people who study Kabbalah have a job that is not in harmony with the laws of nature, and on the global scale this type of work is leading the world to a global crisis. I am talking about any kind of work, from being a miner to an astronaut, which is meant to satisfy human egoism.

Kabbalah tells us to exist in harmony with nature and to take only as much as we need from it. But coal, oil, the cosmos, vehicles, and thousands of other areas we work in all disrupt the harmony of nature and the correct relationships.

What should the people working these jobs do if they also want to study Kabbalah? How can you study Kabbalah when you understand that what you do to make a living harms the system? Should we all change our jobs, and if yes,  what kind of a new job should we find?

My Answer: If your job doesn’t hurt anyone directly, then you can keep working there. Eventually, your circumstances will be changed from above according to your advancement into spirituality and the degree of your connection with the worldwide group.

Question: Can a person’s daily, professional activity help him to advance toward the Creator? How can a person change his profession (especially in midlife) so it will become an additional, efficient instrument for advancement (in addition to the books, the group, and the teacher)? Or would you say that a person’s job doesn’t matter, and one’s movement toward the Creator is independent from one’s day to day work?

My Answer: If your profession is not intended to hurt people (such as theft, and so on), then it doesn’t matter where you work. A person is judged according to what he does in his free time – the time he has left over from work and other responsibilities. He is judged by how efficiently he uses this time for his spiritual improvement.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Get a Job
Laitman.com Post: Kabbalah and Choosing a Profession
Article: The Purpose of Creation

Filed under: Spirituality - No Comments →

Three questions I received on work in the group:

Question: You say: “Don’t connect through your bodies, but through the ‘points in the heart’ – you must feel that they are together.” How do we do this?

My Answer: The point in the heart is a Reshimo (reminiscence) from a past spiritual state. However, now it desires the Creator, spiritual fulfillment, egoistically. With the help of the group, you should try to connect these aspirations for the Creator, even if they are egoistic. Together with the group, you suppress all your other aspirations for this world. You exalt the Creator and belittle this world.

As a result, everyone starts to feel that it’s vitally import to reveal Him, and this will bring you to the goal. See Baal HaSulam’s Letter from p. 70, “I am Sick With Love.” It’s an egoistic aspiration, just like a man yearns to be united with the woman he loves! Nothing more is required of us, because the actual correction of our egoistic nature to equivalence with the Creator is done by the Upper Light (Ohr Makif) – see item 155 of “The Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot.” It created us and only It can correct us! However, It’s waiting for our desire and readiness for this to happen.

Question: What is the difference between nullifying oneself before the Bnei Baruch group and nullifying oneself before other groups that have similar ideas of equality?

My Answer: The difference is the groups’ goal and the method of attaining it.

Question: What should we do when we meet the friends, but there’s no connection between the points in the heart and the meeting turns into a painful and boring pretense? Is this still considered an attempt at the mutual guarantee, unity, and overcoming the ego, or is it better not to even go to these meetings at all?

My Answer: It won’t happen by itself, you have to make efforts and work on it. We’re working against our ego, after all; this isn’t exactly “love at first sight.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: How Do You Avoid Becoming Relaxed On the Path?
Lesson on Article “Attaining the Unity of the Universe”
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee”

Filed under: Unity - 1 Comment →

Below are excerpts from the “Declaration of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy.” My comments appear in italics:

From item 1. …cooperation… to restore global growth and achieve needed reforms in the world’s financial systems.
Cooperation is possible only when it is absolute, like in one family.

From item 2. …reform to help to ensure that a global crisis, such as this one, does not happen again.
It’s unclear what kind of reform they are thinking of, because they still haven’t pinpointed the real cause of the crisis – egoism.

From item 2. …market principles… and effectively regulated financial markets…
Forced regulation will only push the system deeper into crisis (as it happened under the Soviet regime). This measure is incomplete.

From item 5. …actions… to stimulate our economies, provide liquidity, strengthen the… financial institutions … unfreeze credit markets
This does not correct the mistakes – it doesn’t even attempt to correct the mistakes, since this kind of stimulation only further develops the causes that led to the crisis.

From items 6 and 7. …Economic momentum is slowing substantially in major economies… Many emerging market economies … are still experiencing good growth … a broader policy response is needed … to restore growth … and support emerging market economies and developing countries.
Sounds great, but who thinks of others!?

From item 7, bullet point 1. …stabilize the financial system…
Or in other words – keep pumping it with money, which will lead to inflation.

From item 7, bullet point 3. …Use fiscal measures to stimulate domestic demand…
But whatever benefits the people, hurts the state.

From items 7 and 8. Ensure that the IMF, World Bank and other MDBs have sufficient resources to continue playing their role in overcoming the crisis …strengthen financial markets and regulatory regimes… Regulation is first and foremost the responsibility of national regulators…
It’s a refusal to create a common financial regulator! They aren’t discussing the creation of a single financial institution, common financial instruments, market transparency, and a change in the management of IMF.

From items 8 and 12. …support market discipline … commitment to free market principles…
Stated simply – they’ve gone bankrupt!

From item 13. …within the next 12 months, we will refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade…
In other words, they won’t limit the outflow of capital. (in the month of October, $50 billion were taken out of Russia alone!)

From item 11. …we will meet again by April 30, 2009…

Additional Comment: Obviously, I’m not a banker, and these are my impressions. Regrettably, the declaration that was agreed on, lacks understanding of the true cause of the crisis, and hence it lacks the correct solution to it. Nevertheless, it reveals an underlying feeling of not understanding what is going on, of being interdependent, and of needing to search for the answers together. This feeling will continue to grow as the problems will keep increasing. The world really lacks knowledge of how global and integral it is, and of the law of absolute interaction!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Another Unfortunate Meeting of the G-20
Laitman.com Post: What Can We Expect from the G-20 Summit in Washington?
Laitman.com Post: The Financial Crisis Is Helping Us to Understand Our Reality

Filed under: Crisis - 1 Comment →

Questions I received on women’s spirituality:

Question: Does the word “man” used in Kabbalistic books also apply to women? For example, “if a man feels a Reshimo, then he’s worthy of attaining spirituality, of feeling the Upper World, and comprehending the reality” (this is a quote from the book Kabbalah for the Student, Introduction to Pticha).

My Answer: Without a doubt, all people – both men and women – must attain adhesion with the Creator. The only difference is that men must perform more corrections than women, according to the structure of their souls.

Question: I heard that you don’t approve of women studying at night. Is this true?

My Answer: Anyone can study whenever it’s convenient for him or her. However, since it’s necessary for the men to unite, the best and most effective time for them to study is together with us.

Question: A man’s egoism and difficulties are revealed in relation to the group. How, and in relation to whom, does a woman’s egoism become revealed?

My Answer: Her ego is revealed in relation to a man, or the men’s part of the group, in the sense that the men are the source of a woman’s spiritual advancement. By making efforts to advance spiritually, a woman realizes that she can only do so through the men’s part of the common group.

Question: You say that spirituality has no connection to our bodies. Then why is it important for us to dress modestly when we come to the Kabbalah center? Shouldn’t the men overcome their ego and stop looking at women as sexual objects, but as their equals in correcting the world?

My Answer: You have to help the men disseminate Kabbalah to the world, instead of showcasing yourself to them. This is why you’re permitted to come to the center! Do you want to be a person who’s of benefit to the world, or a “woman”? When you have to do work together with the men, it’s important that there be no difference among the participants.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Women Need to Work On Correction Just Like Men
Laitman.com Post: Women’s Spirituality is Finally Being Revealed
Laitman.com Post: Men, Women and Spritual Roots
“A Talk About the Spiritual Advancement of Women”

Filed under: Women - No Comments →

Three questions I received on working with egoistic and altruistic desires:

Question: What are the “egoistic desires” and what does it mean “to be above them?”

My Answer: Egoistic desires are all the desires that are not to bestow to others, to love others, and to bestow and love the Creator. They are called egoistic because you desire to receive fulfillment inside them.

“To be above them” means to use them in order to be independent of them, and moreover, to use them for fulfilling others.

Question: You have explained that the “screen” is a rejection of the egoistic desires, an aspiration to be above them. When I want something and strive for it, but I don’t attain it, I tell myself that I don’t want to want it and that it doesn’t depend on me. Is this a rejection of the egoistic desires?

My Answer: No, because in doing so you egoistically don’t want to suffer. This is why you reject your desires: in order to stop feeling emptiness and pain in them.

Question: When one works with absolute bestowal in the corporeal world, despite the feeling of emptiness, the suffering caused by external factors causes a lot of heartache. What can be done about it?

My Answer: Read a lot of material about the global correction. The texts should evoke enough force of the Upper Light in order for you to start feeling the common desire and the Light within it.

Related Material:
From Chaos to Harmony: The Solution to the Global Crisis According to the Wisdom of Kabbalah

Filed under: Egoism - No Comments →

Editorial News Report (from Executive Intelligence Review): If the participants of the G-20 meeting won’t reach an agreement, the world economy will rapidly collapse, billions of people will die from hunger, and social chaos will begin in the G-7 countries.

My Comment: The participants of the G-20 meeting should at least reach a certain level of mutual trust in order to coordinate their actions in the economic (and perhaps military) spheres. The world needs to see a connection between different countries. It won’t help to simply exercise control over fiscal operations (banks, companies, equalization of different currencies, cancellation of offshore accounts, annihilation of monopolies) and to reach a consensus to refrain from military attacks. This won’t help because Nature is forcing us to become integrated!

Even if they won’t reach an agreement, they should at least agree to meet together in order to solve the problems of global reconstruction, according to the laws of the single system.

A Kabbalistic text says: “The hearts of the kings and their ministers are in the hands of the Creator.” And the Creator is governed by people’s desires to the degree they are similar to the Creator – to the quality of love for one’s neighbor. Therefore, everything depends on the dissemination of the knowledge about the world’s globality and our connection within one family. When we realize this, we won’t feel hatred for others, but for our own egoism, which is the only evil in the world. And after that we will also feel an aspiration for love of others.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Another Unfortunate Meeting of the G20

Filed under: Crisis - No Comments →

A question I received: What specific, practical measures would you advise the governments to take to combat the crisis?

My Answer: Kabbalah says that the world’s integrality requires that each person receive what is necessary for him to exist, and give the rest for the benefit of the society as a whole. This shouldn’t be done forcefully, like in the Soviet regime, but should come from people’s understanding that it’s necessary to carry out the law of nature that states: “All people are one family.” Every person will be rewarded for this with the sensation of eternal and perfect existence (outside of one’s egoism), just like all of Nature.

The needed actions: In addition to establishing an educational organization, every person must be given whatever amount of money he needs to lead a normal existence. No one should be allowed to have more than this amount in his bank account. Everything else should go into the “common account.”

The result: It makes no difference how much funds or resources there are for this. What’s important is the action itself, because it is integral, global, and harmonious with Nature (the Creator). Hence, it will evoke a positive reaction from Nature upon the society.

Comment:
1. These actions must be carried out together with distributing powerful educational, explanatory material through all mass media channels (see my “Lecture in Arosa“). Bnei Baruch already has the material!

2. If humanity won’t act as described above, with understanding, willingly and voluntarily – through the study of Kabbalah, then nature will force us to do the same thing, but through a long and bitter path of suffering. The situation will be like a stubborn child who doesn’t want to do what his parents tell him to, and who’s only swayed by punishment into understanding that he needs to listen and do as they say. Only later will he come to realize how correct and good his parents were.

Related Material:
Transcript of my Lecture at the 3rd World Spirit Forum in Arosa, Swtizerland

Filed under: Crisis - No Comments →

News Report (from Times Online): The maverick economist John Maynard Keynes, whose ideas helped to navigate Britain out of the mass unemployment of the 1930s, imagined a completely different future for us. He predicted that in three generations’ time (the era we are entering), everyone would have enough to satisfy their needs and basic desires. We would then be liberated to explore the greater potential of humankind.

Keynes rejected the possibility that once we had solved the economic problem we would shackle ourselves by constantly chasing ever more stuff – possessions, debt, celebrity, Brand’n’Woss-style infotainment, rather than learning to be satisfied with material contentment and evolving from there.

My Comment: The source of all our mistakes is our ignorance of the fact that human nature is absolutely egoistic. Kabbalah warns that in our time of global interdependence between all human systems, ignorance of these laws will lead to a catastrophe. So stop trusting all the sociologists and economists, because we’ve entered a period of new social laws!

“Mom, who is Karl Marx?” – “Karl Marx was an economist.”

“Like our aunt Dalia?” –“No, aunt Dalia is a senior economist!”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Would It Be Like to Live In a Perfect World?

Filed under: Crisis - No Comments →

News Report (translated from gazeta. ru): Does the stock market have rules or is it governed by a divine whim? A great deal of research has been done on this question. A “divine whim” is defined as the difference between real prices and those set by the rate of return and liquidity. In other words: the stock market operates at a low return, but prices keep growing or dropping according to the prevalent opinion at the moment: “everything will get back to the good old times” or “this is the end of the Western civilization.” This would mean that the process we are dealing with, which is turning the world around, is accidental.

My Comment: There is no going back! Our egoism has grown and we have risen to the level of global interconnection. This is happening for the first time in human history, just as Kabbalah predicted thousands of years ago. I invite you to verify this by going into our old lesson archive and listening to our lessons from many years ago.

Nothing will return to the good old times. Everything taking place marks the end of Western civilization. Ahead of us lies a global, single, common world. We are all one family; we can’t run away from it and we depend on it completely. Even dying won’t help, because you will have to come back to complete the correction!

We need to create a stock market that will be based on the rules of the world’s global system. Everything has already been described. Study Kabbalah!

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Present Crisis Is a Crisis of People’s Trust in the Egoistic System of Relationships
Laitman.com Post: My Article on Ynetnews – A Kabbalistic Interpretation of the Economic Crisis

Filed under: Crisis - No Comments →

My old friend, journalist and columnist, Sergei Leskov, had a conversation with the director of the Institute of Philosophy at the Russian Academy of Sciences, academician A. Guseynov. Dr. Abdusalam Guseynov was present at the defense of my dissertation at the aforementioned institute. I am grateful for his position on this process.

His words are as follows (my comments appear in italics): Until now humanity’s fundamental conviction was that scientific and technological progress was good. But these hopes have proved to be illusory.

Philosophy was founded on the possibility of creating a heaven on earth by changing human nature. Now it is clear that the progress has brought about a deadly threat, and this fact requires us to take responsibility on a fundamentally new level.

The Kantian “ethics of goodwill” must be supplemented with the ethics of responsible action. This puts greater emphasis on the role of absolute prohibition, embedded in the ancient code of Moses – first and foremost on the prohibition on violence, or in other words: “Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done to you.” This rule is a stepping stone to the rule, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” For more on this, see Baal HaSulam’s articles “The Revelation of Godliness (Matan Torah)” and “The Arvut.”

On the other hand, the process of individualizing morals continues. In other words, the society delegates the right to decide what’s right and wrong to individuals. If these individuals are Kabbalists – those who have already attained “the future of humanity,” then they can be trusted, but those who “don’t live in the world of tomorrow” must not be trusted under any circumstances. They will be wrong, as they always are, because they are governed by their egoism.

Filed under: Crisis - No Comments →