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With The Flow And Against It

Question: Is globalization, which has already been observed in the world for a long time, compatible with the ideas of the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: Clearly, globalization is the program of development for the whole world, and the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks specifically about how the world develops and in what manner we humans must adapt to this development. This is because we have freedom of choice; we can go towards the goal that was programmed into the plan of creation in either a bad way or a good way.

Our entire choice is in this: Either nature pushes us forward through suffering, up to the next world war, or we will wisely go according to nature.

Question: Do you suppose that there is a threat of a coming world war?

Answer: Certainly. The wisdom of Kabbalah warns that there could be a third nuclear world war and even a fourth. But in any case, the program of creation must be implemented; all of humanity must unite into one single whole according to the principles of equal mutual relationships, friendship, unity, and mutual assistance. In any case, nature will force us towards this if we ourselves don’t understand that there is no other way out except to realize what the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about and to reach this by a gentle and intelligent way and not through suffering.

Comment: Opponents of globalization say that when we all gather together and unite, we will lose our national identity.

Answer: What difference does it make what we lose and what we don’t?! If nature is moving in this direction, then only a fool can go against it.

It is necessary to take a look at the movement of nature itself. After that you must think: Do you want to go along with it? If not, then you will be swimming against the stream; that’s your business. What will result from this? Russia is an illustrative example.

I am not saying that the West understands it all to the end. It also inhibits its movement along with the flow, but at least it changes. In the West, in spite of it all, there exists some kind of understanding of a need for progress, for it is organized according to an egoistic principle. While in Russia, everything was organized according to an ideological principle. Ideology was above the egoistic nature there, and that was their downfall. The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks about our need to ascend to the next level, above both ideology and egoism.
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From KabTV’s “The New Year” 12/25/14

Pioneers Who Broke Through To The Truth

The Tower of Babel represents separation, lack of understanding, and distance between people. From that situation, through overcoming this separation, a group emerged that followed Abraham and later became the Jewish people. Because they wanted to discover the meaning of life, Abraham taught them how to discover the hidden force that acts in nature.

Question: This is the entire secret of the Jewish people, that they revealed this force?

Answer: They discovered this inner force in nature; the rest of the people who were around them didn’t feel it and lived as if they were in another world. For with their discovery of the higher power, the group of Abraham discovered the existence of a new world between them.

They lived on the same planet, but they also saw what was happening beyond its limits, behind the physical image. We feel the Earth and everything that exists in it by way of our corporeal senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touch. Whereas, they received a new perception: an understanding and feeling of the two forces that manage the world—the force of reception and the force of bestowal.

Ordinary people didn’t understand this at all. It would be necessary to pass through the same inner transformation as the group of Abraham did in order to understand it. And this is the secret of the Jewish people; they began to recognize and obtain the forces that manage the world.

Question: And this made it possible for these people to manage the world by themselves afterward?

Answer: They could participate in this management correctly.

Question: Does it follow that this group has managed the world throughout all of history?

Answer: No, this group was designed to manage the world, but they didn’t succeed in carrying out this role. Yet this task remained imposed upon them.

Question: The Jewish people have strongly influenced humanity throughout history, far exceeding the influence of any other people. It follows that it is not by chance that even thousands of years ago this group began to obtain the forces that manage the world, while in general, it never occurred to all of the rest of the peoples that there are forces like these. Do Jews have some kind of advantage over the others?

Answer: The Jews have an advantage, but they don’t use it to the detriment of others, but rather to help the whole world and to raise it to the same level. They are not arrogant about this; on the contrary, they feel that they must prepare themselves to serve all of humanity, to bring everyone to the same discovery. For it is written: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7), “…and all nations shall flow unto it” (Isaiah 2:2).

The Jewish people were only the first group of all of ancient Babylon to discover the higher power. They were pioneers who broke through to discover the real world. But ultimately they must bring this to all of the inhabitants of Babylon.

All of humanity, at the end of its development, must attain the same vision of the world with the two forces that manage it—the force of reception and the force of bestowal. As it is written: “…for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them” (Jeremiah 31:33).
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/25/14

When Poison Turns Into Nectar

Question: It says: “and honor the face of the old man, and thou shalt fear thy God: I am the Lord.” What does that mean?

Answer: Honor is the state in which you adhere to the upper level by wanting to receive everything that you can from it, thus allowing it to operate and bestow unto you. This is how honor is expressed.

Comment: Suppose I pay someone a visit and the kind host serves me refreshments and says: “if you honor me eat a bit more.” And I eat out of my respect for him even if I am full.

Answer: This doesn’t happen in the spiritual world. There we see an accurate correlation between what the lower lacks and what the upper has. The upper offers you what you lack and you have to prepare yourself for the meal by eating only for the sake of the host. Although these flavors fill you, it is actually above them that you should establish your attitude to the host because you do it only for him and not for your own pleasure.

But this is a problem that you have to solve gradually. First you must find out if this is the custom. Suppose I have some coffee now and I feel good and I thank the host and try to ascend above the flavor of the coffee so as not to enjoy it but only the action of bestowal.

If, for example, I was served gasoline instead of coffee, what should I do about it? Would I drink it and enjoy the fact that I delight the host? This is a problem.  What I receive, what the host gives me, does matter; I respect him and believe that I should give him everything, but I fulfill it above what I find pleasant or unpleasant.

What should I do so that it wouldn’t matter to me at all? The main thing is that I can respect the host, no matter what he gives me, even if it is poison. Then the poison becomes nectar for me because I only respect the host and agree to everything as long as I can delight him. Therefore everything depends on our thoughts.

We can totally detach ourselves and not feel the taste at all, I remember asking my teacher Rabash once why is it that when I begin to eat with the intention of not for myself but in order to bestow the taste suddenly disappears. There can be a great dish before me and I can be very hungry and really want to eat but when I restrict myself internally and focus myself on the intention of in order to bestow, I don’t feel the taste of the food anymore. Later he began to treat me differently seeing it as first signs of my serious work on myself.

In this case, it isn’t only the flavor that disappears, but you can actually drink a whole glass of poison and it will be like the remedy of life for you, carrying a blessing.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/16/14

A Civilization Of The Mindless

Question: Lately there is such a direction as behavioral economics. Many studies show that humans are not rational creatures, but instead, they are managed by sensory impulses, and they often act to their own detriment. Do you agree with this assertion?

Answer: A human being is a desire to receive and the desire to receive is devoid of logic (rationality). Each one chooses exactly what to enjoy for himself. But apparently my rational choice is contingent on education, habit, and values.

There are also other factors: fear of death, a desire to succeed, and looking good in the eyes of one’s peers in his environment. The survival and sexual instincts play a role that is no less important.

Question: For quite some time, psychologists have attempted to identify those hidden forces that don’t permit us to make rational (logical) decisions.

Answer: Today, on the long road of development, and through our increased power, we see that our entire civilization is completely irrational. It acts destructively towards itself and deliberately chooses the way of suffering.

For example, a mother teaches her child: “Be conciliatory towards others, be quiet, then you will have more friends.”  Whereas he says adamantly: “I don’t want to!” We see  examples of this not only in children. Adults and entire groups of people fight, kill, and destroy each other only out of envy, vanity and a desire to dominate.

It is completely understood that the aspiration to fulfill our inner drives and our irrationality is what manages us and we only employ our intellect later, when it is necessary for getting what we want.

Question: The expression, “Humans are emotional creatures” indicates that he feels the awakening of some desire within him. To what is he sensitive?

Answer: He is sensitive to what he is missing, which is to say, according to what he needs. He pays attention to himself all the time: “What do I want? What kind of desire is aroused in me now obliging me to fulfill it? I am a slave to my desires; they dominate me.”

Question: If intellect only serves the desires, where is wisdom found?

Answer: It is found within the desire. The desire to receive is our nature. This is apparent on all levels. Atoms maintain their form, plants absorb beneficial substances and emit harmful substances, and animals multiply. All of this is the desire to receive and fulfill itself with all kinds of pleasant things according to a program that exists in each individual.

That is how wisdom manifests itself on the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate. Except in humans, the program for life for all other living creatures cannot be changed. Every cat will eat fish for pleasure, even if it has never tasted it previously. Everything is different with humans. You don’t begin eating Chinese food if you are accumstomed to a Slavic cuisine from childhood. What can be derived from this is that humans undergo a unique program that we call education.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 7/11/13

On The Golden Path To The Spiritual Ascent

The Torah, “Leviticus,” 19:35: You shall not commit a perversion of justice with measures, weights, or liquid measures.

The Torah leads a person to the goal and so everything that he does is only in order to advance a bit further along that path. The incorrect balance of the right and left lines is called “unrighteousness.” The balance is measured  “weights or measures,”which means by the internal human attributes and by the external relations between people. Therefore, you should always follow the middle line along the golden path, by connecting the right and left lines correctly.

The Torah, “Leviticus,” 19:36 – 19:37: You shall have true scales, true weights, a true ephah, and a true hin. I am the Lord, your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall observe all My statutes and all My ordinances, and fulfill them. I am the Lord.

In order to turn the negative egoistic force to a positive force, which means to dress the force of the left (the egoistic force) to the right (altruistic) force so that they will operate together, we should balance them accurately. This means that to the extent that you have altruism, the attribute of love and bestowal, in your right hand, you can use the ego in order to attach it to the attribute of bestowal. This collective action creates the middle line that determines and serves as the connection of the two lines.

The more you advance towards connection, love, and bestowal, the more the Creator reveals the ego in you so that you will have something to balance. Therefore, the ego of everyone who ascends grows even more. This is totally in contrast to the rationality of our world: We believe that if we are corrected, we become better.

In the spiritual world a person advances along two lines by stabilizing the middle line by the two and constantly becomes better along the right line and worse along the left line. He constantly switches from one line to the other and is thus once wonderful and once terrible, and it is all so that he will learn to work in the right connection of the two attributes.

It says, “true scales, true weights, a true ephah, and a true hin.” True refers to the middle line, which means to the correct combination of the two attributes.

Comment: In our world a true person who is loyal and reliable is said to be “a nice person who is not an egoist and who is constantly in bestowal and always thinking about others!”

Answer: Such a person is simply not developed enough and is naïve like a little child. He hasn’t gathered and hasn’t brought out everything that is in him yet.

People who follow the spiritual path absorb the whole universal ego. They discover an enormous egoistic potential inside them, but it is kept under the dome of the Masach(screen) and this is the reason that their spiritual potential is also immense. It is because all the powers of the ego are focused on bestowal in the spiritual direction.

Therefore, it is very difficult to ascend the spiritual levels. The ego constantly pulls downward while you have to pull yourself upward. Thus, is it is said that everything in you should be accurately measured.

Question: Can the states that Kabbalists go through be seen by the naked eye?

Answer: Kabbalists present spiritual and corporeal states, which are therefore not evident to an ordinary person. I know what a great range of states my teacher Rabash used to go through in the duration of a day, but an ordinary person wouldn’t understand it.

Question: What did you feel about it? How is it possible not to forget that although you feel a person in all his revelations he is your great teacher?

Answer: These are the two sides of the same coin: an attitude towards the body and an attitude towards the spirit. I could easily distinguish between the two since the body is a physical state and I know how to handle it since I know something about medicine and have grown up in a family of doctors, but as to the spirit, I tried not to interfere.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/16/14

Don’t Turn To Medicine Men

Question: The Torah says, “Don’t turn to medicine men.” Why is this forbidden?

Answer: In principle, a person should turn only to the Upper Light for help; not to wait for help from below, but to look above. This is the problem. We usually run to doctors and look for something in order to make our situation easier.

Of course, this is not excluded. The Torah tells that it is impossible to manage without it, but only to the extent that it is necessary within the framework of the accepted direction of the society. All other efforts need to be directed to the Creator, the source of the problems.

Question: In the Torah it says that if you get sick, then go to a doctor. You said that your teacher would first go to one doctor, then to another doctors, and only afterward would begin with the treatment. Why?

Answer: You need to hear the opinion of both doctors and then choose one of them. Of course, they need to be respected and serious. And if both of them don’t agree, then go to a third, since from the first two you learn what the third should be. The choice is in your hands. Don’t trust blindly!

In this way, it is forbidden to trust the medicine men. Medicine men are those who don’t turn to the Creator but to all kinds of healing methods with the help of all kinds of spells and other such technology, which are not able to correct the person himself.

However, you can attain peace, tranquility, and good health without correcting yourself, but instead through some kind of alternative means. Thus, with people like alternative health practitioners, one must be very careful.  Without knowing it, they make our path even longer and increase sufferings. We must try to avoid experiences with them.

Very regretfully, a person gets used to acting as the others act in his surroundings and there is nothing to be done about this since a person must live within society. As it is said, “I am found within my people.”
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/16/14

Year 2015: An Optimistic View Of The Future

Question: What kind of a year will 2015 be for the world, Israel, and the wisdom of Kabbalah, which is only beginning to be revealed to everyone? To what extent can it be revealed in the near future?

Answer: I bind these three parameters together: the world, Israel, and the wisdom of Kabbalah. The state of the world depends on the extent to which humanity will discover the wisdom of Kabbalah, the science of managing the universe.

Comment: This sounds like a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, which frightens the whole world…

Answer: There is no conspiracy. If there were, it would be very easy to expose and rapidly destroy it.

But it is true that the Jews determine the future of the world at every moment of its history and development. Here I agree with all of the anti-Semites because this is a law of nature! There can be no agreement or disagreement, whether we like it or not. This is the way it is, so there is no reason to hide it. I wrote about this in my article in The New York Times.

Anti-Semitism exists because Jews are not performing their function. As soon as we begin to perform our function, all of the nations of the world will turn their faces towards us and will help us with everything.

Question: How is it that you think that in 2015 the Jewish people will come closer to implementing the task that has been entrusted to them?

Answer: It depends on how much we reveal the wisdom of Kabbalah to the world. It explains how the nations of the world and the Jews influence the system of governance; we are all included in the  general global development and constitute a single system. So we have to know how to interact correctly so as to influence the external system of nature whose forces move all of humanity forward.

When we will really become one with the forces of nature, people will no longer be divided into religions, nobody will rule over anybody else, and we will not need to aspire to anything other than harmony with nature. Every moment of our lives we will focus only on this.

Our development will immediately be clarified by our sensing eternity and perfection. We will stop thinking about the existence of the body; it will gradually disappear from our senses. We will feel an influence that comes from outside of the system into which we will seemingly begin to dissolve.

We will start actively transitioning to a completely new level of existence, into another dimension. This sounds a bit unusual, but it is truly so. The wisdom of Kabbalah raises a person to an eternal level.

The unity that is created as a result of our connection on a physical level is our collective immortal soul—one for everyone. Within it we discover our next existence on a new level of our development.

This is because today we are still on an animate level of development, absorbed by our concern for our physical body. Food, sex, family, wealth, fame, power, and knowledge, all determine the present human level.

But when we rise above these interests to the connection between us, we will reach a next level of existence called “unearthly.” So now we belong to the animate level. But if we begin to develop the human being out of ourselves, we will then create Adam (Man), from the Hebrew word “Adameh” (similar), a single image similar to the upper nature.

I look at the future with optimism and still hope to see how my students and all of the Jewish people will become the luminaries of the world. In any case, they cannot escape this mission, but it’s preferable for us to understand it as soon as possible and begin to realize it in the world, thus reducing suffering to zero.
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From KabTV’s “The New Year” 12/25/14

Don’t Be Afraid To Start A New Life In the New Year!

Question: How does one finally start a new life in January 2015, the life which we postpone year after year?

Answer: We have our television channel that we sustain with our own money, without receiving help from other sources. I strongly recommend that in this New Year, everyone tune in to [Israeli] Channel 66 and start watching and listening to it.

In this way, you will gradually enter a new world. You will discover how to reverse your life to one that is safer, kinder, gentler, and will begin to understand where you exist. If you begin to engage in serious study, then you truly will be able to reach new heights. It is possible for each one to achieve it.

In many cities there are branches of the Bnei Baruch Education Center, which provides Kabbalah courses for anyone that wants them. Through the Internet, it is possible to study virtually and connect with others. We also organize meetings, conventions, and conferences here and around the world.

Comment: Please give us advice on how to achieve happiness in 2015.

Answer: Let’s create a bond between us. Start to learn about what the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks of. It is the most ancient wisdom that comes to us from Babylon. Its founder, Abraham created the Jewish nation by uniting people around the wisdom of Kabbalah. This wisdom clarifies the foundation and general outline of man’s nature.

Read my article “Who Are You, People of Israel?” published in The New York Times on September 20, 2014. The article addresses the sources of anti-Semitism, what is happening today in the world, where are we from, etc. Begin by reading these small pieces.

When you are ready, I will be waiting for you in our center in Petach Tikva where I give lessons for beginners. It might be that we will meet in another city, since we have many students all over Israel.

Let’s become acquainted, let’s do it, and in spite of the results of the election, the year 2015 and the following years will be years of peace and good.
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From KabTV’s “The New Year” 12/25/14