A question I received: Why do you draw a connection between the financial crisis and a “global Kabbalistic revolution?” Isn’t this going a bit too far?

My Answer: There is a state of standalone objects, and there is a state when they unite into a system. That is when new and special laws are revealed – the laws of globalization, communication, interaction, and interdependence.

Standalone individuals in the animal kingdom are egoists, but as soon as they join together, a law is revealed that enables their system to survive. This law obligates them to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the system, for their society. Of course, in the animal kingdom this happens unconsciously; it is embedded in the animals by nature and they follow it blindly. The human level differs by man’s self-awareness. Man must carry out the same laws of nature consciously and willingly.

Hence, as long as we were not united, there was no need to take the system into account, nor to follow Nature’s law of “bestowal and love for one’s neighbor.” However, as soon as a tight interconnection emerged in Ancient Babylon – the first global civilization (global with regard to that time period, in a compact area), then a crisis was immediately revealed – our imbalance with the natural law of the human community, “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

In Babylon, we managed to solve this problem by annulling the very system or civilization. We separated from each other and scattered all over the world. However, today we are connected and there is no place to run. We can try, but by so doing we will only go back to the past. We can’t even imagine what comforts we will lose, because no country in the world today can be self-sufficient. This would be like going back to feudalism. Our development, its forms and pace are predetermined by nature and its integral law. Hence, if we go against it, we will perceive our opposition to it in the form of terrible suffering.

This is why Kabbalah says that the only option we have is to recognize the natural law of the human community, which is “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Of course, this type of relationship can be adopted only when every individual will be corrected from “for the sake of oneself” to “for the sake of others.” This can be done with ease if:

1. The society and the mass media will support and encourage this, and look down on those who do not do this (however, not by means of punishment);
2. People will study Kabbalah (for the masses, superficial familiarity with Kabbalah will suffice) and thereby attract our future state, which already exists.

I think that “procrastination is like death” – in the literal sense of the word.

Related Material:
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A question I received: What can every person do to change the situation in the world?

My Answer: No physical, political, scientific, or social actions can change our world. So if the world can’t be changed, perhaps we can change man. What will this give us?

Physicists are discovering that the results of scientific experiments depend on man’s presence, even though they still don’t know the degree of this influence nor its nature. Kabbalah studies how man’s consciousness and intentions affect reality, and how we can control this influence in order to change reality!

There is an initial, constant and absolute reality – the World of infinity. Besides, there is a reality that we create with our intentions. In our world, we have never before changed our egoistic intentions. We did not know that by changing our intentions from “for our own sake” to “for the sake of others,” we actually change all of reality.

We did not know that we can affect reality to the degree we become similar to the Creator’s quality – “bestowal and love.” Kabbalah tells us how to do this.

At the end of our spiritual development we will be convinced that the only thing we have to change is ourselves (rather than the world). By doing so we won’t just change our world, but all of reality will change from corporeal to spiritual, from life in the body to life in the soul.

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When I speak to economists about the crisis, I find that they and I are interested in different things. They are not interested in the cause of the crisis, and are willing to accept my explanation of it. What interests them is the evolution of the crisis, and what needs to be done here and now – by a bank or a family.

For now, my propositions that what needs to be corrected are the relationships between everyone – both organizations and people around the world, sound naïve to them, because they do not yet see the cause of the crisis – the lack of kind connections between people. These connections must come from the understanding that we are all part of one organism, and we can cure this organism only by mutually caring for all of its parts. That is the only way to solve this global problem and all the crises that are gradually becoming revealed in humanity today. They are being revealed because our egoistic development has brought us to the point where we are all united within a single organism.

With regard to the global crisis, the process has begun, but this is just the beginning. There is a lot to say about it, and we will talk about it much more in the future – its causes, progress, purpose, and possibilities of softening it – “the path of Light” that Kabbalah offers instead of “the path of suffering.”

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A question I received: Why do you keep insisting that the current financial crisis can only be solved by changing the relationships between people?

My Answer: This question has already been answered in a previous blog entry.

Moreover, economists are also saying that the reason for the stock market crisis is people’s loss of trust in banks and companies. After all, the rise and fall of stock prices depends on the rise and fall of people’s expectations of companies and banks.

In addition, people suspect that even in a time of crisis, companies are putting away considerable “revenue” for themselves. The managers of the banks and companies that went bankrupt knew about the upcoming bankruptcy, and they made sure to give themselves and their employees salary raises in order to “stock up” ahead of time. Hence, the present crisis (and there will be other crises as well) is a crisis of people’s trust in banks, businesses, and in the future as a whole. It’s a crisis of trust in the egoistic system of relationships and its ability to continue regulating our life.

This is why Kabbalah views this crisis and humanity’s general state as the beginning of the world’s correction. We must realize that we absolutely depend on one another, and that it is impossible to get rid of this dependence. We are like members of one family who share common joys and woes. We must create an atmosphere of “familial” trust and care on the entire planet – only then will the systematic global crisis subside.

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It is written, “The only people one does not envy are one’s children and one’s students.” I am proud of my students. Hence I am proud to publish texts and clips that my students send to me. The following was sent by my student Tasha Fridkin from New York:

An analysis of the crisis
It is known that the laws of nature work regardless of whether we know about them or not. No one will test the law of gravity by jumping out of the window, since we know the result from our life experience.

However, few people know that besides the laws affecting our physical bodies, there are also laws affecting our souls. We don’t see the souls in our world, and the interactions between them are also concealed from us. Nevertheless, this does not make the laws any less strict – they still inevitably affect us even if we don’t clearly perceive their influence.

According to these laws all of our souls are interconnected into one harmonious and balanced system that is based on the principle of bestowal. Every individual contributes the most he can to the system, taking only the necessary minimum from it.

Humanity, however, has developed differently. It has reached the state where every individual desires to give the minimum and to use everyone else to the maximum to get personal gratification. Moreover, we have even stopped noticing this. Every person wants to win the lotto – to spend a dollar and win a million. But where does this million come from? It comes from a million people who spent one dollar. In other words, every individual wants to snatch from everyone else, for his own self benefit. And this is considered absolutely normal.

But there is an imbalance between our spiritual and corporeal existence. The violation of the spiritual law evokes the apparent and tangible manifestations in our physical world, such as the current financial crisis. This crisis is but a particular manifestation of the general crisis of all the social connections. The financial system is the most vulnerable one, similar to the blood in an organism, connecting and permeating the entire worldwide community. Nothing has changed in any part of the financial system; the crisis is purely psychological. We have revealed our incorrect usage of the connections between us, and as a result we have lost our trust of the system and the entire system has collapsed.

That is to say, we have reached a state where the externality – the structure and principles of our integrated systems, is losing importance compared to the internality – our thoughts and intentions when using these systems.

If every one of us will not change our attitude toward the people around us, adopting attitudes that match the connections between the souls, then we will continue to oppose the laws of nature. Then these laws will affect us more and more negatively. No one can run away from this; there won’t be any place on earth where one can hide, waiting for things to improve.

The world is crumbling. If you want to be saved, then start with yourself – with your attitude to the people around you. No one else is going to save you.

The world is built by every one of us. The world is our common home, and it is built according to the laws of nature. It can either bring us enormous, inconceivable abundance, or – if it is founded on egoism – it will bring us inconceivable suffering, which will nevertheless force us to change.

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A question I received: Strange things have been happening around me over the last several years. The people I really looked up to before are now hitting rock bottom in life, or doing things that go beyond any accepted social norms. I used to be very driven, but now I’ve lost all desire to prove anything to others.

I have this feeling that all the people whom I used to know well and looked up to, are not who they were. I am rude to my relatives, and constantly feel ashamed of it because I love them. I feel annoyed at the elderly, repulsed by people’s faces, and I hate my own body.

I’ve been studying Kabbalah for seven years and watch the lessons every day. It is very burdensome for me to attend Congresses and group meals, but watching the lessons over the Internet is a delight. I feel like I really want to avoid seeing people in person. Is this normal?

My Answer: Everyone has their own speed and stages of development. If you study systematically and work on dissemination during your free time, then you can be sure that every state will pass. You will work through it, and then the new stage will come. They will keep alternating like this all the way until the full correction.

However, the rate at which they alternate depends on your efforts, and this constitutes your only influence on your entire path to the Creator. If your development is happening at a natural speed, then you experience pressure (suffering), which forces you to change. However, if you stay ahead of nature’s (the Creator’s) pressure by aspiring on your own, then you won’t experience suffering, but on the contrary, will feel joy and inspiration. The choice is yours!

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News Report (translated from CNews.ru): A group of Oxford based researchers has submitted a paper to Physical Review Letters (one of the world’s most prestigious physics journals) seeking to explain the observed dynamics of the Universe. It proposes that we are inside a special, unique location in the Universe where matter’s density is abnormally low and is atypical for the Universe as a whole. This theory, called Geocentrism, supposes that we are located in the center of the Universe.

The alternative point of view is the Copernican principle, which postulates that the Universe is uniform and does not have a special place for the Earth or the Solar System. This is the principle that the current scientific theories are based upon. However, it is unable to explain the modern scientific conception of the world.

My Comment: According to the science of Kabbalah (part 16 of the Talmud Eser Sefirot), our world is the last degree of the lowest spiritual world, the World of Assiya. It is located in the center of all the worlds, and in the center of our world lies the Solar System, and in its center lies the planet Earth. At the Earth’s center lies Israel, at its center – Jerusalem, at its center – Mount Moriah, then the Temple, and finally – the Holy of Holies (a room with special relics). All of this reflects the influence and proportions of the spiritual forces.

Modern science is nearing its end, the ceiling of its qualitative development. It’s already discovering a barrier that it cannot cross, and hence it is adjusting its theories to match what Kabbalah has been saying for millennia. In Part 1 of “The Tree of Life,” Kabbalist the Ari writes that our world of matter is inside all the spheres of the spiritual force field:

And when upon His simple will,
Came the desire to create the world and emanate the emanations,
To bring to light the perfection of His deeds, His names, His appellations,
Which was the cause of the creation of the worlds,
He then restricted Himself, in the middle,
Precisely in the center,
He restricted the Light.
And the Light drew far off to the sides around that middle point.
And there remained an empty space, a vacuum
Circling the middle point.
And the restriction had been uniform
Around the empty point,
So that the space
Was evenly circled around it.
There, after the restriction,
Having formed a vacuum and a space
Precisely in the middle of the endless light,
A place was formed,
Where the emanated and the created might reside.

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I’ve received many questions from parents who wish to see their children develop properly, and whose children suffer from the results of the education they receive in school.

It is important to nurture the correct perception of reality in children from an early age. This brings out a completely different attitude toward the world in them; they begin to perceive the concealed connections between everything that happens around them, to interpret events accurately, to find the causes of what is happening and to answer questions regarding behavior on their own.

This is obvious in the group of children that I work with. But how can this become an asset of every family? Ideally, in the proper environment, it’s possible to develop spiritual vision in children from an early age, and to bring about spiritual growth alongside the physical growth. Rav Kook (who lived between 1865–1935 and was the chief Rabbi of Israel) wrote that if he could, he would study Kabbalah with six year old children.

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A question I received: In a previous blog entry someone asked you: “How is it known that there is only one true source of Kabbalah?” You answered: “There can’t be several because the Creator is one.”

I fully agree with you about Berg and his shamanistic business concepts, such as selling spirituality through red strings, cameos and reading spells or blessings. But I still don’t understand why there is only one, unique and single source of Kabbalah! After all, during the times of the Second Temple there were thousands of Kabbalists. Based on the qualities of their souls, each of them taught his students differently about how to attain the Single Creator. The students had a choice.

Moreover, you have said that until the 19th century most rabbis were Baalei Hasaga (they attained spirituality), so people also had a choice.

But now you’re declaring that your path is the only correct one. Can our world really be so scanty on Kabbalists that there’s no one left but you who is

a) A Kabbalist, and

b) A revealed Kabbalist – someone whom you, as a Kabbalist, can genuinely recommend to a potential student who is still at the stage of searching for the right Teacher? And what about the verse, “There are many paths to the Creator”?

My Answer: In the process of studying Kabbalah, one often experiences doubts about the correctness of the path. This happens because the path and the goal are concealed. The path is paved with descents, and times of clarity are rare. Unlike egoistic advancement, on the path of Kabbalah you are going against yourself. This is why the question arises, “Can it be true that the worse things are, the better they are?”

When I asked Rabash about how can I be sure that he is my teacher, he replied, “You have to verify this for yourself!” In fact, even Baal HaSulam wrote in his Letters that he no longer saw any Kabbalists in his generation. I also don’t see any, other than myself and my students.

Every person has to find his own teacher. I don’t have the addresses of “Teachers-Kabbalists,” but you can easily find them through the search engines by searching the keyword “Kabbalah.”

Related Material:
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Chapter from Book Attaining the Worlds Beyond: Rav Laitman’s Quest for the Kabbalah

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Questions I received on the virtual society of the future:

Question: Which technical means (Internet, TV, radio, and so on) can be used to create the virtual society of the future? Does the necessary technical support exist today? What other things are necessary that haven’t yet manifested in our world?

My Answer: We are starting to really focus on this now, and it is becoming our highest priority project – to create a virtual meeting space for all those who aspire to unite, who strive toward the Creator. As soon as this common aspiration will acquire the needed goal-oriented force, it will begin radiating with similarity to the Creator. He will then become revealed to everyone within this unity.

Your advancement upwards depends on the efforts you make to disseminate Kabbalah outwards – to add more souls to the correction. Hence I recommend not missing the opportunity to participate in the development of the virtual Kabbalistic community.

You can send your ideas to [email protected]

Question: Since the internet is developing so fast, is there any point in hosting distance classes for beginners? Maybe we should have fewer classes like this?

My Answer: I think that soon this will come to an end on its own. However, as long as there are people who desire this, we should continue doing it. You should continue developing only the virtual education, communication, and even congresses.

Question: Your blog is already a virtual group for those who “enter” it. However, don’t real groups have a very big influence on the world Kli, while the influence of an internet participant is much smaller? Yet the combined influence of a large number of virtual participants is much bigger than the influence of real groups?

My Answer: Everything adds up to a combined effort until it will reach the necessary size, and then – inside this common mass – everyone together will start to feel the Upper Presence.

Related Material:
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Kabbalah Today Article: The One Link Google Can’t Reach
Kabbalah in Second Life

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