Two questions I received on what conditions are necessary for one’s spiritual advancement:

Question: I am 18 years old. I live in Brazil, far away from any group, so I am studying online and my only contact with the group is through the Internet. Since my point in the heart woke up, I keep on the path as much as I can, but sometimes I feel alone here, not being able to attend the Congress or to be part of a physical group. What’s your advice: is it enough for me to be connected with others through the Internet? What else can I do to accelerate my correction?

My Answer: Staying virtually connected suffices in order to advance. Watching the lessons, keeping a virtual connection with the entire worldwide group of students, and participating in Kabbalah dissemination are the sufficient conditions for revealing the Creator!

Question: It seems to me some people live in conditions (socially, financially, physically, mentally, etc.) that are simply not conducive to entering spirituality, even though they may have a point in the heart and even though they may want to study Kabbalah. Can they cross the Machsom?

My Answer: If a person has received knowledge about this opportunity, it means that the Creator has given him a freedom of will, and after that everything depends on the person. Every Reshimo that emerges in a person contains all the data about his inner and outer Kli (that is, about him and his surroundings). This gives him the feeling that there is “him” and “the world,” including everything necessary for his advancement and free choice (including the group, whether virtual or physical). This is why it is written, “A person should always say, ‘The world was created for me’ (for him to realize his inner Reshimo at every given moment). If one sways oneself to the scale of merit, he sways the whole world to the scale of merit. And if one sways oneself to the scale of evil, he sways the whole world to the scale of evil.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Regardless of the Internet, The Real Connection Happens “Soul to Soul”
Laitman.com Post: How Do We Connect Our Points in the Heart?
Kabbalah Today Article: Are You Connected?
“The Purpose of Creation”
Kabbalah, Science and the Meaning of Life – “Part IV Realizing the Spiritual Gene”

Filed under: Spirituality - 1 Comment →

A question I received: Please show me practically, using examples from history, how do Reshimot change?

My Answer: The periodical change of our attitude to life is dictated by the changing “genes” in us (Reshimot, which comes from the word Roshem – “recording” in Hebrew). The stages of egoism’s changes are recorded inside each of us from the beginning, when the common soul divided into many souls.

Reshimot are revealed in us in an increasing, consecutive order: 0-1-2-3-4. Therefore, at the beginning stages of their realization in us, the Reshimot brought forth a small egoism in us; and in those lives we were “naïve” – slaves and masters. Then, as more advanced Reshimot surfaced in us, when we were born in the next epochs, we desired to be freer, to be workers, such as vassals or serfs. Women were married off without their permission, and this was considered “correct.” They loved their husbands because their small egoism did not get in the way. This was the accepted norm.

And after that, as more advanced Reshimot were expressed in us, we desired to be “free” workers for hire, employers but not masters. We desired freedom and equality (including for women), and so on.

Reshimot elicit desires in us, and the desires provoke the mind to achieve what we desire. Today we can see nations in whom different Reshimot were expressed in the same epoch, and therefore we don’t live in one cultural zone, but in different cultures and formations. However, globalization is bringing about a quick realization of Reshimot in every person and in everyone together.

In regard to choice:

• marriage (voluntary – through love, or forced – stealing the bride, paying a ransom, marrying by the father’s order, and so on),

• power (coercive – although later accepted and loved, like in Russia until today; by election; or inherited),

• place of residence (being attached to the place, having a residence permit, a passport system, free movement),

• and according to other signs, one can tell which Reshimot were realized in a nation or a civilization.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Path of Light Versus the Path of Suffering
Laitman.com Post: We Raise the Entire Universe Up to the Creator

Filed under: History - 1 Comment →

A question I received: Baal HaSulam says that our entire freedom lies only in choosing our environment. But if we were to choose our environment now, wouldn’t our choice be based on what we received from our previous environment?

My Answer: We choose a new environment under the influence of a new spiritual Reshimo: suddenly a desire for something “beyond this world” arises in us, and then we are somehow brought into contact with a new environment – Bnei Baruch. This is where your new path begins. And it’s the same for everyone. This is why we (Bnei Baruch) exist.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Our Brains Are Slaves to Our Environment
Laitman.com Post: The Solution to the Global Crisis Cannot Be Found Without Kabbalah
Laitman.com Post: The Kabbalah TV Channel On YES 66

Filed under: Free Will - 1 Comment →

In the News (from VOA News): “Researchers Investigate Biology of Social Conformity” According to researcher Vasily Klucharev of Erasmus University in the Netherlands, the study shows when people hold an opinion differing from others in a group, their brains produce an error signal, making people think they made a mistake.

My Comment: Kabbalah explains that a person is always under the influence of the environment and unwillingly perceives others’ opinion as his own (see the article “The Freedom”). We cannot avoid being slaves of our environment. Our freedom lies in finding an environment that will give us the correct opinion – one that’s directed at the goal of creation.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: If Society Wills It, You Will Worship a Horse
Laitman.com Post: How Can We Stop Being Slaves of the Advertisement Industry?

Filed under: Society - No Comments →

In the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “His Empire in Tatters, German Billionaire Takes Life” Adolf Merckle, one of Germany’s wealthiest men, committed suicide. Mr. Merckle’s body was discovered Monday night near train tracks… In a rare interview last month, Mr. Merckle told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung he had survived “many so-called stock-market crashes” but that he “couldn’t calculate a banking and financial crisis of this dimension.”

My Comment: He’s right: there’s never been a crisis like this in all of human history, because the current crisis is “qualitative.” It was caused by the human society’s opposition to Nature. Society has become global and interconnected like a “small village” where everyone is completely interdependent (“the Butterfly Effect”). However, our mutual egoistic hatred destroys all the connections. The effect of broken connections in a single system manifests as a crisis in the system – a crisis in all areas of our activity.

The crisis will not end until we find a solution – a way to be together, united by bonds of bestowal and love. This is what is required of us by the system that we have found ourselves in. We cannot escape these closed connections. We will have to observe the rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We can do this through suffering (as we always have) or by realizing that it’s necessary (the method of Kabbalah). The choice is ours.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: People Don’t Realize That We Are Living In a New World
A Conversation about the World Crisis
Article: “The Law of Love”
Kabbalah for the Student: “What Does Love Thy Friend As Thyself Give Us?”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Introduction to the Book, The Tree of Life”, Item 4

Filed under: Crisis - 1 Comment →

In the News (from Tribble Ad Agency): The Great Depression has reached Detroit… unemployment has reached 21%, and it’s expected to get worse… even the criminals don’t want to leave jail … some offenders, notably those without homes of their own, were now expressing reluctance to leave jail when their sentences were done.

My Comment: People won’t be able to save themselves by running away from their responsibilities. It’s necessary to teach the prisoners about the new world and the global connection between everyone, and to prepare them for a new life, so they could come out to freedom with a new, clear conscience! Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to put all of us through solitary confinement? (That’s a joke.)

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Media Must Help Turn Our World Into a Giant Classroom
Kabbalah Today Article: The Changing Nature of Humanity

Filed under: Crisis - No Comments →

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.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Influence of the Environment
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Freedom”
Kabbalah for the Student: “What Does Love Thy Friend As Thyself Give Us?”

Filed under: Society - No Comments →

A question I received: The Vice–President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs said the following about the outcome of the financial crisis, “You can’t run away from the crisis. The world today is globalized, so it’s stupid to suppose that in the great ocean of instability, there are islands of prosperity that remain. First of all, people have to reduce ‘show-off spending.’ Over the last one hundred years, Americans have developed the notion of ‘noble behavior during a crisis,’ which includes charity.”

My Comment: This is not enough. What we need is a complete overhaul of human consciousness and attitude toward self, the world, and the Creator. Nobility and charity cannot correct anything.

Gradually the world is gaining a recognition of the “non-earthly” tasks it must now resolve, and people will then discover the method of solving them, Kabbalah. But for the time being the world is still comforted by thinking that it’s possible to go back to the past by making superficial changes.

Here is what Martin Wolf wrote in The Financial Times: “Choices made in 2009 will shape the globe’s destiny” Welcome to 2009. This is a year in which the fate of the world economy will be determined, maybe for generations. Some entertain hopes that we can restore the globally unbalanced economic growth of the middle years of this decade. They are wrong. Our choice is only over what will replace it.

It is between a better balanced world economy and disintegration. That choice cannot be postponed. It must be made this year. We are in the grip of the most significant global financial crisis for seven decades. As a result, the world has run out of creditworthy, large-scale, willing private borrowers. The alternative of relying on vast US fiscal deficits and expansion of central bank credit is a temporary – albeit necessary – expedient. But it will not deliver a durable return to growth.

Fundamental changes are needed.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Global Crisis Brings the End of Glamour
Laitman.com Post: Wishes for the New Year – 2009
Kabbalah Today Article: What Happened?
Babel – a Tale of Two Trails
Baal HaSulam Article: “Peace in the World”

Filed under: Crisis - No Comments →

News Report (from The Times): “A tidal wave of discontent threatens China” The Chinese Government announced yesterday that exports had fallen at their fastest rate in a decade. China’s exporters are collapsing, pulling down other businesses with them. According to some serious statisticians, the unemployment rate may have already passed 20 per cent. This makes the severity of the economic crisis in China much sharper than in the US and Europe.

Following in the footsteps of the US Government, the Chinese Government in November announced a four trillion yuan ($600 billion) public spending package to get the country out of the slump. But this won’t work in China. If the Chinese Government does not take a New Deal approach, it risks the Chinese people revolting and overthrowing those in power. Across the country there is mounting evidence of popular discontent turning to violence.

My Comment: The crisis is unfolding completely differently in free countries and in totalitarian countries. The closer a country’s structure is to free development, the calmer the unfolding of the crisis will be, and the quicker its people will realize the cause of the crisis and how to come out of it: through free correction of every person and all of us together.

In the free countries, a person is used to taking care of himself, and therefore he perceives the need to change differently. He takes it as his personal concern, rather than transferring the responsibility for the needed changes to the government. Because the people in the free world have this psychological preparation, they have an advantage over the people who grew up in countries with restricted freedom (responsibility).

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Crisis Is Systematic and Global
Laitman.com Post: Who Will be Most Affected by the Economic Crisis?
Laitman.com Post: Will China Be the Superpower of the 21st Century?

Filed under: Crisis - No Comments →

News Report (from Bloomberg): Barack Obama’s choice of a Nobel Prize-winning physicist as energy secretary will redefine the way policy is made… Obama plans to invest $150 billion in alternative energy technologies… In particular, how to store energy when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining. Battery technology has to be improved, carbon sequestration has to be developed and cellulosic ethanol has to be made more affordable. …new nuclear and other power plants that would cut emissions of so-called greenhouse gases. “…He’s going to continue to keep an international portfolio, but the message this sends is we are going to have a science-driven, fact-driven energy policy…”

My Comment: Nature will pressure us to reduce our irrepressible demands to a level that’s necessary for a normal and optimal existence, without any excess. Hence, it’s a good idea to invest government capital into developing the above directions in science, technology, and industry. This will prove successful because it is harmonious with Nature. The criterion for success is balance with Nature.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Would It Be Like to Live In a Perfect World?
Kabbalah Today Article: A New Direction
Kabbalah Today Article: The Hurricane Within
Lecture in Arosa

Filed under: News - No Comments →