A question I received: You used to participate in many international conferences, but then you stopped. Why? Isn’t this a good way to disseminate Kabbalah? How can you give it up?

My Answer: We are facing global problems: a disruption of the climate, mass starvation, epidemic outbreaks, the threat of nuclear wars, fights over oil and water, religious wars and terrorism, environment pollution, and so on. In other words, the crisis is becoming so inclusive that we cannot afford to keep ignoring it. We are obligated to change the situation before we’ll have to start “solving it” with dramatic military measures.

The way out of the crisis is much simpler than we think. Initially I thought that it would be possible to gather scientists such as sociologists, politicians, businessmen, economists and other renowned people who feel responsible for what is happening in the world. I thought these people could come together in a big Forum that would solve the current problem, and in general, this Forum would have to work all the time.

However, the problem is that eventually all the participants will have to reach the conclusion that science does not understand the true solution nor does it have the means to implement it! And in so doing, they would have to negate their own importance. But people’s personal egoism does not yet allow them to overcome it. The suffering is still insufficient and people’s desires for fame and glory are still too great.

This is why I stopped participating in different international gatherings (such as in Arosa, Switzerland; Tokyo, Japan; Dusseldorf, Germany; Monterrey, Mexico, and so on). I also saw that I cannot speak as a representative of Kabbalah at these forums, because by speaking as a Kabbalist, I repel the scientists from this idea even before they can comprehend its essence. People’s preconceived notions and incorrect views of Kabbalah are still too great.

I hope that the widest dissemination of the Kabbalistic idea, specifically through the masses, through the environment that surrounds every person, will gradually cause people’s attitudes to Kabbalah to change. They will realize that Kabbalah is the initial, ancient source of all sciences and philosophies. Without revealing the fact that the solution comes from Kabbalah, we won’t be able to explain the solution to the crisis correctly and fully.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Crisis Is a Step Toward Eternal Harmony

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In the News (from Impactlab): “City Life Is Bad For Your Brain” The urban environment impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. “The mind is a limited machine,” says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, “And we’re beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations.”

My Comment: Man was created to exist in balance with nature, to be a harmonious part of the correct eco-sphere. This can be achieved when everyone comes to an agreement, in two stages: “Don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you,” and then, “Love your neighbor as yourself. If we build the world and the environment based on these attitudes to everything outside us, then the environment will be optimal for man. Someday, we will get there; Nature will force us to.

News Report (from CNN): “Behavioral screening – the future of airport security?” Security experts say focus is shifting from analyzing the content of carry-ons to analyzing the content of passengers’ intentions and emotions… Developers say the combination of these technologies can detect a person’s reaction to certain stimuli by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration, signals a terrorist unwittingly emits before he plans to commit an attack.

My Comment (a joke): One day they’ll invent a device that will be able to tell whether a person “loves his neighbor” or not. (They’ll also do this using the external signs, or maybe by one’s immediate reaction to something.) Whoever loves his neighbor is good for society, and whoever does not (whoever hasn’t attained it yet) is an anti-social element.

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Kabbalah for the Student: “What Does Love Thy Friend As Thyself Give Us?”

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In the News (from Associated Press): “Removing cats to protect birds backfires on island” It seemed like a good idea at the time: Remove all the feral cats from a famous Australian island to save the native seabirds. But the decision to eradicate the felines from Macquarie Island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover… Removing the cats from Macquarie “caused environmental devastation” that will cost authorities 24 million Australian dollars ($16.2 million) to remedy… They have targeted dozens of islands over the past few decades with mixed success.

My Comment: Ecologists need to take a Kabbalah course in order to learn how to implement correct projects within a closed, harmonious ecosystem.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Financial Crisis Pales In Comparison to the Looming Ecological Crisis
From Chaos to Harmony: Chapter 10 “Balance With Nature”

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In the News (from Science Daily): “Making The Most Of It: Study Reveals Motivating Factor For Enjoying The Present” According to a new study, thinking that we have a limited amount of time remaining to participate in an activity makes us appreciate the activity that much more and motivates us to make the most of it. These findings support the idea that “thinking about an experience’s future ending can enhance one’s present experience of it” and that “focusing on the fact that an experience is fleeting enhances enjoyment by creating a ‘now or never’ type of motivation.”

My Comment: At every moment in time, one has the opportunity to change oneself and the world for the better. If one has this attitude to life, then he is always enthusiastic about life. After all, “the world” is what you build and perceive within!

Question: I don’t understand: if everything is driven by thought, which begets the mind, then what’s the end result of it all? Is it to achieve the goal of absolute harmony and attainment of the Creator? But what for? And what’s going to happen once this is achieved? And what’s the point of creating the primitive creature that is man in the first place – to revel in our ego?

My Answer: The goal of developing our desire is to attain the sensation of the state of perfection inside this desire. The most rational, quick and easy method to bring oneself to perfection (to correct oneself) is demonstrated to us by the Creator through His work (Avodat HaShem).

Just as adults teach children how to live in our world by showing them examples of the proper behavior, so the Creator shows us examples of the behavior that’s necessary in order to start perceiving the concealed part of the world. However, if we act of our own accord, then we are like children who don’t have parents or the right environment, and are trying to grow from a primitive stage to a level of being able to understand life in the modern world. How can they possibly do it without being educated at home, in kindergarten, school, and so on!?

Related Material:
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In the News (from Environment News Science): “Global Warming Forecast to Leave Half the World Hungry by 2100” Climate change will desiccate crop yields in the tropics and subtropics by the end of this century, leaving half the world’s population facing a food crisis. The area at risk stretches from the southern United States to northern Argentina and southern Brazil, from northern India and southern China to southern Australia and all of Africa.

My Comment: These people will be forced to leave their lands and move north. But will the developed countries withstand such an influx? And if yes, how? Perhaps by using nuclear weapons, as Baal HaSulam writes in the article “The Last Generation”?

The source of all our problems is that we disconnect ourselves from nature, thinking that all existence is split into “man” and “the environment.” This view of nature makes us think of everything around us as a supplement to man.

Even when we do care for the environment, it is only for our own narrow gain, with no regard for the holistic system of nature. Violating this closed system of nature evokes its negative reaction to us. And since we are a product of nature, we end up suffering on all levels of our existence.

Therefore, we must replace all of our educational programs, such as “Saving the environment,” with educational programs such as, “Man is an integral part of nature.” After all, the solution lies not in cleaning water from pollution or restoring the ecosystem, but in creating a single system, where everything is “One Nature,” instead of “man and nature.” Hence, there must be only one educational program, just as Nature is one. We must imitate living organisms and use them as models for how to organize our lives as a single whole.

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From Chaos to Harmony: “Nature’s Plan”
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News Report (from Commodity Online): According to a new IBM national survey of 30,000 US consumers, they are changing their shopping habits to deal with shifting budgets and incomes. The study, titled ‘Shopper Advocacy: Building Consumer Trust in the New Economic Environment,’ shows that tighter budgets and lower confidence have fundamentally changed consumer behavior.

My Comment: This is why no bailouts or purchase incentives will help the financial situation. We have passed a psychological turning point. As long as society’s feeling of financial security is not restored, people will not spend a cent beyond necessity. Egoism is growing and changing, and people are no longer willing to throw around their money – the times have changed. So we shouldn’t try to bring back excessive production or luxury vacations all over the world. Instead, it’s best to engage people in something more useful for their souls and bodies – and for the ecology too!

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News Report (from Health News): As many as one in eight teens in the United States takes a virginity pledge at some point, vowing to wait until they’re married before having sex. But do such pledges work? A new study suggests that the answer is no. According to a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, pledge takers are as likely to have sex before marriage as other teens who are also religious, but don’t take the pledge. However, pledge takers are less likely than other religious or conservative teens to use condoms or birth control when they do start having sex.

My Comment: We always obey nature’s orders. We must discern where our free choice lies, and act only there, because everything else has absolutely no importance. Battling “windmills” won’t get us anywhere. We will only scold ourselves, and then fall further into drugs and depression.

Our free choice lies only in constructing the proper environment – one that facilitates the attainment of the goal of creation. When it comes to bringing up the young generation, the greatest priority is to educate them on how to distribute their efforts correctly, in order to attain the maximum, eternal bestowal in life.

News Report (from Time): “Are Romantic Movies Bad For You?” Researchers are beginning to ask whether the make-believe world projected in “rom-coms” might actually be preventing true love in real life. They found that problems typically reported by couples in relationship counseling at their counseling center reflect misconceptions about love and romance depicted in Hollywood films.

My Comment: We are all brought up, and later live, according to non-realistic standards that were invented by others. The only correct upbringing is to use Nature as the example, without believing in anything or fantasizing. This is what Kabbalah reveals to a person.

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News Report (from GfK): For the international GfK survey on cheating, carried out in 19 countries, the respondents were asked whether cheating was more common today than ten years ago, particularly at school, where taxes were concerned, in sport, in the workplace, in business and in relationships. Almost half of all respondents thought that more cheating goes on now than ten years ago.

My Comment: Indeed, egoism is growing, and there is no way for us to curb it. Even though we admit that our actions are bad, we no longer blush about it; we’re even proud of it.

News Report (translated from Israelinfo.ru): “Israelis have become crueler to the weak” Statistics show that over half of those who were killed on the roads of Israel in 2008 were the most unprotected: pedestrians, motorcyclists, and bikers.

My Comment: This is evidence of an increased egoism, neglect for the weak, and the feeling of impunity due to the fact that such egoistic behavior is becoming a norm. The accidents aren’t even mentioned on TV anymore, and people don’t have the right attitude to them. Indeed, egoism doesn’t allow us to take even the basic precautionary measures. Defenseless, our society is heading right into the mouth of the Snake!

News Report (from Times Online): Although there is no definitive list of mortal sins, many believers accept the broad seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride. …new sins have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalization. Whereas sin in the past was thought of as being an individual matter, it now has “social resonance.” You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbor’s wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos.

My Comment: So how would we put the sins in a spiritual order?

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Chaos to Harmony: “Chapter 4. Breaching the Balance”
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A question I received: I am taking the fall Ari Online course, and I have the feeling that Kabbalah is the only method that can explain what is out there. I am Cuban and now live in the USA, where I studied Chemistry and earned a Master of Science degree. I have a better material life than what I had in Cuba, and I can say that I am happy. But I am very concerned about the environment, the wars, terrorism, religious intolerance, drugs, and so on.

I am studying with Ari Online, and also watch the programs on kab.tv with great interest. I want to learn more, but I am worried because I don’t know that to do.

My Answer: You have to find the answer for yourself. I have no right to persuade you. It is precisely by searching for the truth that you will reveal the Creator. But this will only happen on one condition: don’t believe anyone and don’t follow anyone except your own heart, once you cleanse it of what you received in childhood and from those around you (once you cleanse it from all the “garbage”). It’s as if you were just born today and have never heard anything about this world yet. It is written that everyday a person should feel like he was born anew, in order to reexamine and check his attitude to the world and his path: “Let the days be new in your eyes” (Ve Ihiu Be Eineicha Ke Hadashim).

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News Report (from PloS One): New Japanese research concludes that greater interpersonal trust is strongly associated with a better quality of life, including physical, psychological, social, and environmental quality of life.

My Comment: Small egoism or an artificial suppression of egoism creates a sense of comfort, because “One who increases his knowledge, increases his grief.” This is why an animal’s life is easier than a human’s. But of course, reducing one’s egoism is no solution to a problem because you can’t fool nature. According to the Creator’s plan, egoism must continue growing until it demonstrates its own incompetence to its possessor, or in other words, until it shows us that it is the source of evil.

This is egoism’s primary mission, as it says in the Torah, “I created a helper against you” (Ezer Ke Negdo). One way or another, the growing egoism will force “its master” (as man thinks at first) or more correctly – “its slave” (as man later realizes) to use it. There is just one solution: comfort can only be achieved by correcting egoism. This not only enables a person to rise above egoism, but because one uses it to bestow, one senses the life of the general soul (Adam). In other words, one perceives his next level – beyond the existence of his animate body, the state of Adam, an existence that’s equivalent to the Creator. He reveals the Creator inside him.

There is so little separating us from happiness!

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Laitman.com Post: There Is No Prohibition On Correcting Egoism
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From Chaos to Harmony: Part 1, Chapter 2 “The Boundaries of Joy”

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