A question I received: One of the principles of Kabbalah for inner work is the “recognition of evil.” Should there not also be a recognition of evil in the collective? You wrote,

“There is only one single opportunity in our world for us to influence the events: by continuously creating a better and better environment (society) that will influence every person. This environment will change everyone’s priorities from corporeal (receiving and using others) to spiritual (bestowal and love).”

Very true. However, the sound principles of Kabbalah will never be institutionalized because all education, economics, media, government, etc. are controlled by the Federal Reserve, IMF, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements that have taken over every segment of society with the exponential power created by the issuance of fiat currencies.

My Answer: The crisis will wash everyone clean, and then everyone will turn into “good boys and girls.” It’s because we are nothing but a desire to enjoy, and when we feel bad, we can become anything and anyone. We will do anything to feel good, without hesitating to give up all our principles. This is why it’s easy to control us, or our egoism.

You will see something happen that has never happened before: suddenly everyone will turn into “good boys and girls.” People will become altruistic in order to survive. And then everyone will start to understand the higher value of love for one’s neighbor. But people won’t just value it because it gives them comfort and safety; they will value it in and of itself. In fact, people will value it so much that even if you offer them all the riches in the world, they will take them only in order to use them for the benefit of others.

But there is another, quicker and easier path to the same result: we can reveal the Creator, the Upper World, and the connection between us by studying Kabbalah. When people see the interdependence of everything in nature and of all people, they will immediately start to act correctly – and then the crisis will disappear.

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In the News (translated from CloudWatcher): Over the last few decades, not many were interested in seeing themes of solidarity and mutual help on TV. The media wanted glamour, blood and violence. But today, because of the crisis and its influence, the most in-demand, urgent topics are none other than mutual help and self-sacrifice.

My Comment: The crisis cleanses people. One Kabbalistic text says, “Meat is cleansed by salt, and people’s desires are cleansed by suffering.” But there are two types of suffering:

• Involuntary suffering, which lasts for a long time, making people wise up against their will in order to avoid the suffering. But gradually, people start to recognize the reason and purpose of the suffering,

• Conscious suffering is when a person learns about the qualities of the Upper World by studying Kabbalah and compares himself with these qualities. He then suffers because he is not similar to these qualities. And as soon as he feels this kind of suffering, he is immediately corrected and filled with goodness.

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Two questions I received about studying Kabbalah:

Question: After four months of intense study and reading The Book of Zohar for eighteen hours a day, I felt a sensation of pleasure that’s beyond this world. I was overcome by the revelation of something new. This lasted for thirty seconds and then disappeared, since I was unable to stand this feeling. Then I stopped studying because it was unbearably difficult. My body became heavy and I couldn’t function. Later I got back to studying, but I started having horrible fears. So I stopped again. Please tell me, what am I doing wrong?

My Answer: Everything. You should eat well, rest, exercise, and work. And only once you have done all of these, when you have free time, you may then study Kabbalah. And you should only study in our beginners’ course.

Question: The Creator brings a person to Kabbalah, but this person is still resisting it. He doesn’t connect to the group and is still trying to find egoistic pleasure. Does this person cause more suffering in the world than a regular person, who doesn’t know anything about Kabbalah?

My Answer: No! It’s because he advances down the path leading to the goal, and the system (the Creator) perceives this person’s temporary stops and changes in direction as discoveries of his uncorrected qualities (egoism), in order to then eliminate them.

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Questions I received on how to correct our egoistic nature:

Question: What do I have to do to persuade the Upper Light to correct me?

My Answer: You have to reach the point where you discover that by hating someone else, you hate yourself, and you harm yourself just by thinking badly of someone, with your negative attitude to others! In addition, you won’t just desire for bad things not to happen to others because they will negatively affect you, but more than that, you’ll begin to discover that your bad, egoistic thoughts about others immediately return to you.

And then you’ll discover that another person and you is the same thing, and you cannot think of others badly as this would be equivalent to thinking badly about yourself. But at the same time, you cannot stop thinking badly of them.
That is when you’ll come to the necessity for the Upper Light, which will correct you.

Question: I hate successful people, and I feel good when others feel bad. I hate the entire world and the entire humanity. What should I do?

My Answer: Actually, you cannot be any different. Everyone feels this way, but most people just haven’t discovered the evil inside them. It is written, “I created egoism and I created Kabbalah for its correction, because the Light of Kabbalah corrects a person (returns him to the Creator).” So, keep on advancing!

Question: What’s the best way to deal with the hatred, envy and jealously that I feel toward others in the group?

My Answer: You will never be able to overcome them. Only the Upper Light, which affects you during the study of Kabbalah, will correct you.

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A question I received: I don’t know what to do. I feel as if I’ve lost all my energy and I am “hanging in the air.” Nothing interests me at work. Even though I do everything possible in my spiritual work, I feel despair as I’ve never experienced it before. I have no “fuel.” Nothing affects me anymore. I feel no desire for anything in this world, and the only desire I have is to escape to somewhere, but I don’t know where to. My heart tells me that this place exists, but I’m still not there. I have been studying with you for over three years and I can’t imagine life without Kabbalah. But I am getting desperate because I feel like nothing is happening to me. On the contrary, the desires of the external environment are affecting me, making me even weaker. What can I do? I can’t continue like this anymore! What should happen now?

My Answer: The reason you are feeling so weak on the spiritual path is that you lack a connection with the group. You aren’t receiving the importance of the goal from the environment, but this is the most important thing – it’s the foundation of our advancement!

You can read more about these states in the Shamati articles and the Letters of Baal HaSulam. There are Reshimot (information or the genes of our spiritual development) concealed in us, which constantly become revealed, causing our egoistic desire to constantly grow. And we must constantly ascend above these Reshimot using our intention to attain the quality of bestowal and love for the Creator. This is exactly why our egoism grows: to give us the opportunity to rise above it, to rise from our world to the level of the Creator.

And then we will understand Him, as it is written, “For they will all know Me, from the smallest of them to the greatest” (Yirmiyahu 31:33). But the process is always the same: the Reshimot that become revealed in us are always egoistic, and every time, we have to receive the force to rise above them by increasing our connection with the environment (the group).

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In the News (from The Guardian): Eastern Europe is heading for a violent “spring of discontent.” Hit increasingly hard by the financial crisis, countries such as Bulgaria, Romania and the Baltic states face deep political destabilization and social strife. “We are fed up with living in the poorest and most corrupt country,” the Sofia protest organizers said.

My Comment: The only way to calm down the masses is by immediately implementing a new global education. And more than calming this down, this will give them an explanation of how to succeed in the new world; not just of how to survive, but how to turn around all of nature so it will influence us positively. We must set a condition that people will receive benefits only if they study. Like children, we all have to learn about how to live in the new world!

People shouldn’t think that the path to the new life is long, because as soon as we begin acting in agreement with the program of our development, according to Nature, we will feel the positive results in everything, including all our actions, the climate and so on.

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In the news (from The Guardian): “Scientists open doors with the power of the mind” A mock-up of a home controlled by the power of thought has been successfully piloted by a hospital in Italy, promising new levels of independence for the severely disabled. Scientists showed that people could open doors or operate lights, a telephone, a small robot and even a robotic hand by wearing a strip of electrodes on their head to pick up brainwaves that signal “interest” and send them to a computer that interprets them as desired actions. Within three years such a system would be of practical benefit to the severely disabled.

My Comment: The power of thought is the greatest force in creation. It is only in our world that we don’t see how our thoughts affect everything that happens to us. Studying Kabbalah enables you to start discerning the net of forces that permeates our world, the matrix upon which our world lies and by which it is governed, and how we unconsciously influence these forces with our thoughts.

When you reveal this picture, you start interacting with Nature correctly. This is why it is so important to study the Kabbalistic sources.

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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.

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In the News (from Science): American microbiologists have created a synthetic microbial system, wherein altruistic microbes that produced a resource beneficial to the public, at a cost to themselves, nonetheless benefited the most in the end, despite losing the competition to egoistic bacteria in each separate population. The affluence of the altruists is attributed to the statistical effect known as “Simpson’s Paradox.”

My Answer: This is taking place on an animate, egoistic level. This is not the altruism that’s above egoism, but rather one that helps egoism to continue existing in conflicting situations.

The altruism that Kabbalah speaks of, and the one we must attain, is above egoism and it utilizes egoism as a basis. This is only possible under the influence of the Upper Light, and only when one consciously uses one’s egoism, instead of the natural egoism of the animate body.

A Kabbalist’s body works by the same egoistic principle as the body of any animal! The confusion stems from the fact that all the books of the Torah, including Kabbalah, use the word “body” to allude to the body of the soul – or in other words, one’s desires. After all, the desire is the only thing that was created; it is the entire matter of creation.

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A question I received: I am non Jewish, and I have been studying Kabbalah for several years. I am considering the path of conversion. However, I am trying to find information on the concept of Chasid Omot Olam. All I know is that this is a non Jewish person who lives his life according to the precepts and the cause of spreading Kabbalah. Is this correct? How can I find more information on this concept?

My Answer: There’s no need to convert. You have to correct yourself to “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and today this is required of all people. Nationalities and religions will vanish, and our world will disappear from our perception. The only thing that will remain is the one common soul, united with the Creator in the state of the World of Infinity, just as it was at the beginning of creation. Read the section about the three states in Baal HaSulam’s article, “Introduction to the Book of Zohar.”

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