A question I received: You wrote: “Every woman represents a desire, and every man represents the fulfillment of this desire. Hence, it’s impossible for women to be friends with anyone, and they can only love what belongs to them.” I don’t understand, why is it impossible for women to be friends with anyone? Perhaps my definition of friends is different. I understand that I don’t have many true friends and just lots of acquaintances, but I still feel I have friends. Can you explain?

My Answer: A man’s egoistic nature has to go through correction in order to transform to “love for one’s neighbor.” However, a woman’s correction doesn’t happen by participating in a group of friends or girlfriends, but by helping the men’s group do their work. How can a woman help them? By working on dissemination.

Everyone has friends, but in Kabbalah we are talking about something special: the unification of the male souls into one common soul, where each male soul and all the souls together are joined by the female souls, like Galgalta ve Eynaim and AHP. The male souls have to correct themselves by uniting, and they then transmit the correction to the female souls. However, the female souls receive the correction only to the degree they connect to the male souls.

It is written that when the Creator was revealed, 600,000 men united in a Mutual Guarantee while the women surrounded them, supporting and helping them. Another example is the family, where the husband works and earns, and a woman receives what he brings her, organizes the home, gives birth and produces the next generation, even though it receives the man’s name.

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In the News (from Daily Mail): “Did a UFO fly past President Barack Obama’s inauguration”? UFO at Inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama has created a buzz. One wrote: “Personally, I think the little green men rocked up to join the rest of the world in wishing Obama well.”

My Comment: Well, actually according to Kabbalah, UFOs (alien intelligence) don’t exist. What Obama’s PR team had in mind was probably more like this: “The eyes of the entire Universe are on America!”

In the News (from FOX News): President Barack Obama’s first public act in office was to institute new limits on lobbyists in his White House and to freeze the salaries of high-paid aides, in a nod to the country’s economic turmoil. The pay freeze would hold salaries at their current levels for the roughly 100 White House employees who make over $100,000 a year.

My Comment: Such solidarity must be universal and equal; then it will lead to Arvut (mutual guarantee) and draw the force of correction, the Upper Light. As soon as even one move is made in this direction, the crisis will be over.

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In the News (from Mail Online): “Loneliness is as bad for health as smoking or obesity, experts warn” Feeling lonely can raise blood pressure, stress and the risk of depression. Psychologist John Cacioppo advises the lonely to try making friends, “Lonely people feel a hunger. The key is to realize that the solution lies not in being fed but in cooking for and enjoying a meal with others.”

My Comment: The only way for an organism to be healthy is when there’s a harmonious connection among all of the organism’s “building blocks.” And it’s the same with people: when we connect by means of a mutual guarantee, we reveal the Upper Life, the perception of eternity and perfection that becomes revealed in our connection.

The current crisis is a sign that we’re making the transition from being souls separated by our egoism to becoming unified souls. When we unite, we will reveal the Upper Life inside our unity!

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In the News: (Interview with EU Commissioner Gunter Verheugen from Spiegel): There is crisis everywhere. That is also true for the crown jewels of European industry – in chemicals and mechanical engineering, for example. Economic indicators point to production dropping by 12 percent in comparison with last year. The latest EU growth forecasts predict that the economy will shrink by 1.9 percent in 2009… But no one really knows how long this crisis will last.

My Comment: It’s time for Europe to wake up and unite, based on the principles of globality, integration, equality, and a mutual guarantee. Therein lies Europe’s salvation. Otherwise it will be torn apart by the Nazi regimes that will emerge. And there isn’t much time left…

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In the News (from Daily Telegraph): “Marriage not regarded as ‘best relationship’ by young adults” Marriage is no longer regarded as the best form of a relationship by younger generations, the largest survey of public attitudes in Britain shows. Married couples will be in the minority by next year, as increasing numbers of people choose to live together out of wedlock.

My Comment: This is happening because the global egoism is now being revealed, and it shows us how interconnected we all are and how much we don’t desire this connection. Therefore, in our time, if we don’t start correcting ourselves, transforming our quality of “using everyone” to the quality of “serving everyone,” we will end up with a complete breakdown of the family unit, which is the basic building block of society.

Such a breakdown of the family unit, the basis of life, is only happening to humans. It does not happen to animals because they don’t have the same egoistic bond between spouses as people do, who must attain the unity where “all are as one,” according to the law of the Mutual Guarantee (Arvut).

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In the News (from The New York Times): “Iceland’s Government Collapses” Iceland’s coalition government collapsed Monday… There are also massive demonstrations in Latvia, Lithuania, Spain, and Greece. Disorder is beginning in France, Germany, and Great Britain.

My Comment: Our opposition to the global village is beginning to manifest as massive disorder. Mutual hatred is spilling over into international, class, and intergovernmental sectors, and the only way to repress this hatred is through global education, which must now begin throughout the whole world. Any country’s government that implements this global upbringing is sure to establish peace in all of that country’s activities.

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News Report (from Financial Times): “German bond sale’s fate signals trouble ahead” A German sovereign bond auction failed on Wednesday as investors shunned one of the most liquid and safe assets in the world in a warning for governments seeking to raise record amounts of debt to stimulate slowing economies. The fate of the first eurozone bond auction of 2009 signals trouble ahead as governments around the world hope to issue an estimated $3,000bn in debt this year, three times more than in 2008.

My Comment: We will continue to reveal the lack of the correct interactions in the whole world among all its parts. This will become clearer as it finds expression in people’s lack of trust, faith, unwillingness to participate, and so on – until we realize that it’s necessary to create new relationships: those of mutual trust and cooperation.

These relationships can only arise once we see the interconnected system that we have suddenly found ourselves in. And for this to happen, we need explanations, education, and upbringing that teach people about the world’s globality.

So what means will we use to come out of the crisis?

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News Report (from University of Miami News): Self-control is critical for success in life, and a new study by University of Miami professor of Psychology Michael McCullough finds that religious people have more self-control than do their less religious counterparts. Among the most interesting conclusions that the research team drew were the following:

• Religious rituals such as prayer and meditation affect the parts of the human brain that are most important for self-regulation and self-control;
• When people view their goals as “sacred,” they put more energy and effort into pursuing those goals, and therefore, are probably more effective at attaining them;
• Religious lifestyles may contribute to self-control by providing people with clear standards for their behavior, by causing people to monitor their own behavior more closely, and by giving people the sense that God is watching their behavior.

My Comment: In our times, all of this is coming to an end because egoism is growing in every person. People no longer have “naive faith” like they did in previous centuries. Only those who are egoistically underdeveloped still have this kind of faith, to some degree. And whether directly or through their contact with the rest of the world (the other souls), these people will also reach a point where their egoism will develop.

Hence, faith is disappearing, and religion remains in the capacity of a custom, a culture, or a framework for domestic life. Religiosity is gradually disappearing, and the only thing that can help us stand up against the global egoism and mutual hatred emerging in us, is what Kabbalah reveals to us: the vision of our global interdependence and the need to observe the commandment, “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

This is what we must do in order to survive, instead of any other, egoistic, commandments of any religion! Religion won’t help us cope with the modern uncertainty, suffering, and crises, despite the fact that people are still coming to religion in the hope of being saved from their misfortunes. Everyone has to go through this and become convinced that religion’s psychological effect no longer works to counter our developing global egoism.

The reason for this is that religion pertains to the level of “Domem de Kdusha,” where a person in society is obedient in a natural way, like a good child. This is the level of the still, vegetative, and animate egoism in us. But today, humanity is rising to the “human” (Adam) level of egoism, where egoism compels us to become individual egoists, and then to conquer this individual egoism and unite in order to attain the Creator.

This is why Kabbalah states that religion will be reduced to just the cultural traditions and customs of every nation, but it will no longer be able to provide psychological support for the people. Faith will be replaced by the knowledge of the Creator, as it is written, “For all will know Me, from the smallest to the greatest!” However, Kabbalah is not against religion, but is there to supplement it – to fill the void that is forming inside the growing, modern egoism, and which is impossible to fulfill by religion.

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News Report (from The Daily Galaxy): “DNA Found to Have ‘Impossible’ Telepathic Properties” Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA.

The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.

My Comment: The forces of unity (bestowal, love, and mutual responsibility) come from the next, higher “intellectual” level than the level of the egoistic elements that unite. For example, every cell and organ in our bodies is egoistic, but by uniting together, each one annuls its egoism and they acquire the quality of complete bestowal and mutual interaction. This way they rise to the next degree of existence: a living and developing body.

The nature of attraction lies in recognizing those who are similar to you, according to the law of balance (homeostasis), or the law of similarity. Two opposite elements – whether cells or other structures – are drawn to each other according to the program of creating a higher mutual existence. This is the connection between all parts of the universe, including all the spiritual worlds. Any connection leads to the assimilation of the following level of existence.

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News Report (from Commodity Online): “Food crisis leaves over 1 billion hungry!” The FAO’s hunger report, the State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008, found that the overwhelming majority of the hungry live in the developing world, 65% of them in just seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

My Comment: With our globally egoistic attitude (mutual hatred) toward one another and the surrounding nature, we will not be able to sustain more than one fifth of humanity. Everyone else will have to die. However, if we correct our egoistic relationships to those of “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” the planet will be able to feed scores more people than are now living.

“Unite or perish” – is the condition of “Mutual Guarantee,” proclaimed by Moses at (against) Mount Sinai (in Hebrew “Sinai” comes from the word “hatred”) to his people: “Either you will unite and be guarantors for one another, as a single whole, or this place, beneath the mountain of your egoism, will be the place of your burial.” Kabbalah explains that everything written in the Torah is meant for us, for our generation. We will have to actualize the whole Biblical tale ourselves!

Question: Several years ago the European countries united into one economic zone. The Latin American countries now want to form a similar union. Under the current conditions, do these unions strengthen these countries or weaken them?

My Comment: If the union is not done at others’ expense, and moreover, if it is done in order to pave the way for future universal unification, then it strengthens them. However, if the unification is private, done in order to set them against others – then it will destroy the people who do it!

In the future, the world will not have to become one country; there may be many countries and nations, each with its respective culture. However, the relationships between them will have to be harmonious and amicable. It’s just as in a body, where all the parts are different, but each one is exactly what the others need.

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Lesson on the Article: “One Law”
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Last Generation”

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