Two questions I received on work in the group:

Question: You said we should feel inspired by the group even when we know this inspiration is artificial. Could you clarify?

My Answer: Because a person is a created being, his essence is the general will to receive pleasure. One’s environment tells him what he should be feeling pleasure from, and the environment transmits this influence onto a person through education and advertisement. These create a value system inside the person.

This is why our only freedom of will lies in choosing what environment will tell us what we must enjoy in this life. The enjoyment can be of two types:

1. Of this world, where one desires to attain things in this world
2. Of the Upper World, where one desires to reveal the Light and become fulfilled by It

You decide which is right for you. (For more on this, see Item 4 of “Introduction to Talmud Eser Sefirot.”)

Question: Do I have the right to demand from the group a display of the importance of the goal, or is the group there for me to display the importance of the goal to them?

My Answer: You can demand it, but this relationship has to be mutual!

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A question I received: If every person affects the world positively or negatively with his influence, then what determines the general picture?

My Answer: The higher one ascends and develops spiritually, the more power he gains. The greatest power is the power of thought. Ordinary people influence the world with their thoughts, desires, and actions, but the extent of their influence is very small, even though there are six billion people.

The world is not static. One always sees it differently based on one’s changing qualities. When you realize that the world is your individual impression, you recognize that it’s necessary to change yourself, rather than improve the world. You must correct yourself in order for the world to change.

If you do so, then you will discover how the Upper Force affects everything that happens, and this will change your entire model of perception and your interpretation of what you perceive. Will people feel better? Will unemployment and hunger end? Will companies really bring their workers back to work? Yes! We will see this happen with our very own eyes.

Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “The Creator’s Concealment and Revelation,” that nothing changes in our world except the Creator’s revelation or concealment. Therefore, it will help us a great deal to stop viewing this world as a static picture that’s constant before us. We should instead understand that the world depends entirely on our perception, on our qualities and inner conception. We will then begin to correct our flaws, and as a result, to see the will of the Creator in everything that happens.

The science of Kabbalah helps us accomplish this. By definition, it is the method of revealing the Creator to the created beings in this world. In the meantime, this world is the picture that you feel today.

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What is the cause of the new situation we are in? Why is the connection between us being revealed? It is to reveal the connection between our souls. This net that binds people together is spiritual, and it is called Adam HaRishon, the common soul.

We are “caught” in it like fish in a net – this is how we feel because we do not desire this connection! However, if you will desire to be connected to everyone else by this net, it will become a pleasure for you. Why? Because through this mutual connection, you will attain the Upper Force and spiritual life.

You are already inside this net – it is Nature itself. And the financial crisis, as well as all the other crises that are happening in different areas, are there for us to become aware of the net we are in.

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A question I received: You recommended watching the shows on the Kabbalah channel, since doing so draws the Upper Light. You quoted the following: “While one has not attained perfection, the Light that is destined to fulfill his soul is considered the Surrounding Light. Hence, when one engages in the wisdom of Kabbalah, the Light immediately shines upon him to a certain measure, bringing him much closer to reaching perfection.” How is this different from tying a red string around the wrist or reciting blessings and prayers?

My Answer: The Upper World is a world of laws, not mysticism. The acting force in that world is your desire, provided that it is aimed at your next state. While studying Kabbalistic texts, you learn about your corrected states. If you strive toward these states, then your desire causes you to advance through the field of Light, bringing you closer to that Upper State. It works just like a piece of metal or an electrical current in a magnetic field which is drawn to the source.

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Everything in the world is just one material – the will to receive, to be filled with the Light of the Creator. This holds true for the Upper Worlds and our world. The difference between any object or phenomenon is only the degree of this desire. A small desire forms an object on the still level of matter, a greater desire – the vegetative level, a greater yet – the animate level, and the greatest desire forms a human being. All the desires are interconnected in one system. Through our senses, we don’t perceive the actual desires, but only their material shell. Kabbalah enables us to shift from the external level to the inner one, and thereby attain the forces that govern the entire universe.

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In the News (from Contrarian Investors’ Journal): “Baltic Dry Index indicates a collapse in global trade” In May 2008, the BDI [price of moving the major raw materials by sea] fell from a record high of 11,793 to a low of 663 since 1986. It has been said that such low reading means that shipping costs is very close to the “combined operating costs of vessels, fuel and crew.”

My Comment: What else do you need when you receive a higher reward for these actions, when your soul is fulfilled, when you feel perfection and eternity, the Upper Harmony that’s above this temporal and imperfect life? People should only change (correct themselves) from reception to bestowal. This is merely a psychological problem, because people will receive billions times more than they do now, and they will receive it forever.

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In the News (from The Irish Times): “Scientists learn how to read our mind” The fanciful notion of mind-reading has moved from science fiction to science fact. A research group in London led by an Irish scientist has used brain scans and a computer to decipher a person’s thoughts.

My Comment: Science is closer than ever to the borderline between our world and the Upper World. Science reveals this world, which is perceived within the desire “to receive for oneself.” However, the Upper World is perceived within the desire “to give to others” and is revealed through Kabbalah. There will be no place left for mysticism and religion!

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A question I received: Here’s a familiar scenario: a person wants to smoke, so he smokes, but suffers from knowing that smoking is bad for him. Or, take an employer who has to pay his employees: if he pays them little – he suffers, and if he pays them a lot – he also suffers. And it’s the same with everything: “To get married – not to get married, to die – not to die,” but no matter what you do, you will be sorry about it later. These are my thoughts. How do you explain them?

My Answer: My advice to you is: Stop thinking about yourself! Let the world go where it’s going without your worries. Don’t think about the world, meaning, don’t think about yourself or the world. Clean yourself out completely.

And now, think about something higher than you or beyond you. Aspire to the Upper World, and hold only this in your field of vision.

However, this doesn’t mean that you should shut yourself off from the world. Make bodily or physical actions in the world to whatever degree it is necessary for you and for others.

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In the News: (from TNS): “Online news is ‘highly trusted’ by two fifths (40%) of those polled” Online news seems to be globally widespread with an average of two fifths (40%) across all 16 countries in the report trusting online news, while traditional press is decreasing (39%). 10% of respondents trust blogs, Wikipedia (24%) is as highly trusted as newspapers.

My Comment: In the future, as we will try to minimize our actions and expenses, the printing industry, including books, will become replaced by the electronic industry. The informational sectors of the Internet, such as Wikipedia, will become more objective and will gain people’s trust. But for the time being they are ruled by egoism, envy, competition and prejudice.

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News Report (translated from Scepsis.ru): The recent years, dubbed the “era of globalization,” will not go down in history as years of prosperity. They will be studied (if there will be someone left to study them) as a time of bloody regional wars, the growing poverty of the Third World, and the crisis of the Western middle class; a time when technological progress and financial speculation brought outrageous profit to tens of thousands, while casting hundreds of millions to the bottom of the social ladder.

The current crisis will be no exception: as we speak, some are already making plans to ensure that the losses suffered by the financial speculators will be reimbursed at the expense of regular citizens and debtors from poor countries.

My Comment: It all depends on how you view the crisis. Kabbalah views it as the beginning of goodness – as the revelation of the evil that is our egoism, the revelation that egoism is the one and only source of evil in our lives. It is the reason why we only perceive a tiny, negligible fraction of our eternal existence. This revelation, that egoism is evil, will be followed by a renunciation of it, and then by the correction of human egoism to bestowal and love.

We will then feel our existence as eternal harmony, called the Upper World or Paradise. And we will feel it both during the life of our physical body and after it dies. So let us accelerate this process by studying the method of our correction.

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