What Does It Mean To Be Jewish Today? Course – Lesson 3

Lesson 3: Life As An Evolution of Desires

[With Chaim and Gilad]

Chaim: Welcome to lesson number three of What Does It Mean to Be Jewish Today. Today’s lesson is going to be about the evolution of the correction method, from we all from Abraham, how he started the correction method and how we developed through the ages until today. We’re going to run through it.

Gilad: We are here to take your questions about the lesson, or even not about the lesson. We’ll try to get to those.

Last time we talked about the evolution of desires. If you remember, we talked about three basic levels—still, vegetative, animate and speaking—which develop everywhere. First of all  you see them in nature, in the reality around us. Starting from the Big Bang, you see the minerals developing—the galaxies and planets and everything develops. Eventually the vegetative level emerges.

Why does it emerge? Because another level of the will to receive emerges, and then the plants start to develop, and then the plants develop further and animals begin to appear. The difference between animals and plants is motion.  Animals can move about to search about for food, for mates for reproduction, etc. Then humans appear. The difference between humans and animals is that humans can actually sense the presence, the past, and the future. They have this thing that animals don’t have which we call envy, which causes them to look into the past and into the present and into the future and constantly compare themselves. So what happens is that they constantly develop, as opposed to animals.

There’s another big difference. Lions: I don’t walk around next to a hungry lion, they’d probably jump at me. But next to an animal that just ate I have no worries. You go to the zoo and the lions have eaten, you can walk by them and…

Don’t try this at home!

…but if you’ve been to the zoo, which probably you have, and you walk next to the lion cage and they’ve eaten already, you feel no threat to yourself, because you know the lions have already eaten. He’s not going to try to eat more, he’s not hungry, he doesn’t need more. However, walk next to a hungry human being, no matter what, if he has eaten or not…

Don’t try this at home!

I think there’s something unique about the human: they’re never fulfilled. With animals, at some level, they’ve got what the need and that’s it. Even if it’s to prey upon or get game. With human beings, it seems like there’s never enough. You’ve got something, you want more. You have more, you want even more.

Precisely! And the way the will to receive develops in this way is through envy. That’s why we mentioned last week that there’s this quote that you never die with half of what you want. You always want twice as much as you have. That’s a human trait, we all know that. The whole consumer society is built on that.

In humans, eventually, another level of desire develops and it’s the spiritual desire. We call it the point in the heart. Kabbalists called it that. That desire doesn’t just want to have everything, but it begins to ask why everything exists. As soon as you have that question, you know you have a point in the heart. Then people start looking.

We talked about how Abraham started having this question and he broke all the statues of his father’s and he moved out of Babylon into Canaan, which later became the land of Israel, and a whole nation was formed that has the answer to why everything happens. We talked about how today this is what everyone needs to know—why everything happens—so that they know how to make everything work.

Now we’re going to talk about the evolution of the correction method. Why? Because Abraham’s method was great for his time, but as Gilad just mentioned, the will to receive constantly develops; it’s not static. As soon as you have what you want you want more and more and more, and what was good for you yesterday isn’t good for you now. The more egoistic people become, the more we need to adapt the correction method.

What is the correction method that Abraham found? It’s a method for correcting egoism. His fellow Babylonians were growing alienated and were moving away from each other and he realized you have to unite above the differences, above the growing distance, instead of actually moving away, because that’s the purpose of creation—to attain the power of unity that exists above everything and that maintains everything. If you do that, you implement the purpose of creation and you have achieved your life’s purpose. If you don’t, then you can run away from one another as long as you want, but eventually, which is what’s happening today, you’re going to have to face reality which is that we’re all connected. Then you have to find a way to connect. So Abraham was trying to do that. He found a good way, but for his time. Afterwards it stopped working.

What happens is, you have egoism which in Kabbalah is called the evil inclination. It depends on how you use it. That’s the whole trick. The evil inclination is mandatory. It’s implanted, it’s inherent in each and every one of us. The only question is how to use it.

Everything we’re saying here is based on the assumption that you have read the book, because you have downloaded the book. That’s how you got into this course. We are assuming you basically know what we’re talking about, and you also had your homework, which I hope was sent to you, which was to read chapter three. What we’re talking about today is based on chapter three, and next week we will talk about chapter four.

You cannot develop without the will to receive, and without the will to receive’s growth, because what happens is that in animals it doesn’t grow. That’s why once an animal has eaten it doesn’t want any more. It doesn’t have a concept of the future—well, wolves keep for themselves stock for the winter; other animals do that too—but in general they don’t plan for the future. They don’t build houses, they don’t have a savings account. Humans do. Why? Because they have a concept of future, their own future and future generations, posterity. We build on that and our will to receive is growing. We are becoming more and more egoistic, so we have to adapt everything, including the correction method, to be able to adapt how we rein in this egoism so that it becomes constructive instead of destructive, as we are seeing today.

We’re talking about two terms here—the evil inclination and the will to receive. Are they the same? Is the will to receive an evil inclination? Is it evil? Are we evil? Please clarify that.

The will to receive is the basic trait that exists in all of creation. In the still it manifests in the form of wanting to preserve current form…

Newton’s law. The first law says that every object wants to stay at complete rest.

That’s why you have to use energy if you want to break any material, because it aspires to maintain its form.

That’s why things aren’t moving around here on the table. They are moving around on a quantum level, like the electrons, but that’s why this [points to object] is not running around; it wants to stay at complete rest. That’s how it manifests in the still level.

In the vegetative level it starts to move, but you have … all plants are basically the same, plants of a certain type. They’ll move according to the sun, they open the petals and close the petals, they all do it together. You’ve got one flower, all flowers are the same.

The will to receive is like the software?

I’d say it’s like the engine. The thing is what happens on the human level. Because, as I said, there’s envy, what we have is never enough. Whenever we have what we want, we start looking for the next thing to have. The whole consumer society is built on that.

If I get a new car, I’m really happy today…

…for a few days, until you see that your neighbor just got a new car which is better than yours…

…then I’m not so happy any more.

So there are two elements about the will to receive in humans. First of all envy, and next the need to be superior. I don’t just want to be on a par with everyone else, I want to be at least slightly higher. There is much research showing that if you make a hundred thousand dollars a year, but you live in a social environment where people make two hundred thousand dollars a year, you’re going to feel miserable. But if you make fifty thousand dollars a year and you live in an environment who make twenty-five thousand dollars a year, then you feel great.

That’s called in psychology ‘hedonic adaptation.’ That means that you adapt to any pleasure that you get and then you’re already pursuing the next kind of pleasure. It’s a good example. I teach and whenever I ask my students how their grade was, it’s never about the actual grade. They always tell me how their grade was in comparison to their class. So it’s like, ‘I got sixty out of a hundred, but everyone else got forty, so I’m good.’ Or, ‘I got ninety, but everyone else got a hundred, so it wasn’t so good.’ It’s always measured according to everyone else. That’s how they measure it and I’m always amazed by it.

I remember when I was a kid, the way to measure yourself, speaking to American students. I had American friends and we would talk being in school and everything. They would never mention grades. They would always say, ‘I’m in the top five percent of my class; I’m in the top two percent.’ They were never below the top five percent, by the way, ever. At least not in what they mentioned. That’s the culture. So we can see that it’s never enough to be good; it’s never enough to be great; you always have to be greater, better than the others around you.

Is that the will to receive or is that the evil inclination?

That’s when the will to receive becomes egoism. Eventually you don’t just want to better. If you’ve done your best and it still isn’t good enough, then you start wanting others to be worse. That’s when the will to receive becomes evil.

That’s the misuse of the will to receive.

Right, and that’s inherent in human nature. It’s not our fault that we’re like that, but we have to learn how to harness it, how to use it correctly, and then we turn it around. That’s why we have a correction method. What is the correction about? It’s about taking this inclination, this desire and using it productively. Our whole technology and society and culture are built on having this will to receive, this evil inclination. It’s great that we have all these things. It’s the reason why we can talk to you, because of everything we’ve developed.

But again, at some point when you use it detrimentally, it hurts you to a point where society becomes unsustainable. We are at the point right now. So we need a correction method for the will to receive. It doesn’t mean we have to stop developing, it means that we have to start using what we’re developing for mutual benefit, for society’s benefit, instead of just for our own. So we have a whole culture to change. That’s where education comes in; that’s where correction comes in.

That’s what Abraham was trying to do. He started educating these people and at some point only those who wanted to be educated according to his idea of mutual benefit moved along with him and the rest stayed in their own societies. Then the evil inclination grew to a point where that method wasn’t good enough. So Abraham’s clan went down to Egypt, meaning that the will to receive was growing in them [again I’m relying you reading Chapter 4]. Egypt symbolizes another level of egoism and they eventually escaped it because they realized they could not maintain unity while being Egypt—obviously if you’re too egoistic—so they escaped.

I want to mention another point that we keep mentioning that is very, very important. Abraham wanted to teach the whole world, not just himself. Slide # 2.

He wasn’t making any discrimination, any distinctions, he wanted everyone to know about this correction method. So gain, the correction method is for everyone. It’s not just for Jews, but Abraham’s descendants because they already had some level of contact and some kind of correction, they have this commitment, obligation to keep spreading, to keep doing Abraham’s work.

So he began to call out to the whole world and then, Slide # 3. Coming out of Egypt through Moses’ leadership, we have a new level, a new stage in the correction method that is required. Why? Because on that level Abraham’s level is not good enough. His method was good for people who were not too egoistic. Moses needs to correct an entire people. Three million people the scriptures say come out with him out of Egypt. It is a huge amount of people and he cannot go and teach them all. He has to find some way that everyone will be corrected and that way has to maintain itself, going from one person to another.

So he develops another stage, another level in the correction method and it’s called the Torah. Torah simply translated means law. What law? Law of unity. That’s why it’s written that they received the Torah only once they assumed upon themselves the law of being as one man with one heart. It’s written that they were told if you do not accept this law, this will be your burial place, meaning either you all become united and attain the Creator, attain the power of unity, the creative force of reality, or you all lose it. You lose that connection and you separate like the rest of the people. So it’s death in the spiritual sense. They had to choose.

It’s a lot like the moment of choice that we are facing today in humanity. We either have to unite, because we have a culture of alienation and separation we have to unite and rise above it, or we are going to lose it.

[Speaker reads above passage from Babylonian Talmud.]

Purity means quality of bestowal, attainment of the Creator, and impurity means egoism. So the people of Israel, entirely, were corrected, were living under the law of bestowal. How? Through Mutual Guarantee.

What does it mean corrected? It means that they are no longer under that law of the will to receive? Suddenly they’ve switched their natures to a different kind of nature? How can a person transform from that egoistic nature we’re talking about—of measuring himself in comparison to others, in being above everyone else and so on—to one of mutual guarantee? Is that changing a person’s nature completely?

Actually, it is. It’s not changing, but correcting a person’s nature, because the will to receive remains within us all the time. The question is how we use it. That’s why we talk about mutual benefit. The difference is this. Do I want to use my skills just for me, to be superior to everyone else, or do we all want to use our skills, our nature, our every talent for mutual benefit, through which the whole of society rises to another level, in corporeality as well, but not just that. You create a new level of connection and through it you discover another level of reality where everything is already connected.

Because you become equal to it—we talked about the radio, the receiver—you begin to perceive that there’s another undercurrent, under-layer to reality where everything is connected. We see it on the quantum level, of course, in physics, but it exists even before that. The reason why it manifests on the quantum level is because it exists at the foundation of reality.

We also see it on the social level today, that everything is interconnected. We see that one event on one side of the world immediately influences everything else on the other side of the world. I just read an interesting article. How many countries does it take to manufacture a pair of jeans? Nine.

I’ll bet a lot more. You never know where the cotton came from…

The cotton comes from Malaysia, thread from Singapore, I don’t remember exactly what comes from where.

And the machinery to make the cotton, and the seeds…

The machinery, that’s already something else…

If you really check it thoroughly, you will find that every single product on earth is probably made from every single point on earth.

That’s true. That reminds me of another research that says there’s no single person in the world that knows how to create a pencil from zero, a simple pencil. When you look into a pencil, just like you’re saying, the wood is cut down. What is it cut down with? It’s cut down with machinery. The machinery is made somewhere else, and that’s made somewhere else, and everything… Even something so simple like a pencil, there’s no single person in the world that can create it from zero.

To get back to the other point you were talking about, because from how you’re describing it, it sounds… our will to receive remains a will to receive, correct? It remains as it is. It’s just how we use it. So it would be like having a knife and either using it to stab someone, or using that very same knife as a surgeon to heal someone, to operate on someone. We’re using that same tool here, that same will to receive, but we’re using it in a different form, in a destructive manner or in a constructive manner, and Israel has to use it in a constructive manner, in a form of mutual guarantee like you were saying, and so on.

Precisely. Just yesterday I saw a story on CNN. They have this guns project now, where they start monitoring gunshot deaths in the U.S. They said that in the U.S. alone, thirty-two thousand people die each year just by being gunned down. But rifles aren’t necessarily bad, right? They could help us hunt or they could help us protect each other. But why do we need to protect each other? So again, it’s human nature, but the question is how we use it. If we are using it against ourselves we are going to end up with a lot worse actually than thirty-two thousand deaths.

Are there statistics on that? What we’re going to end up with? What we’ve already ended up with? Let’s look at the screen.

On screen

• Approximately 40% of the world’s agriculture is seriously degraded.
• 75% of fish stock are over to fully exploited (i.e., we are running out of fish).
• Global temperaturerise—9 out of the 10 warmest years have occurred since the year 2000. [Global warming isn’t just an idea or as scam or whatever. This is fact.]
• About 80% of the world’s population live in areas with threat to water security.
• Significant increase of natural disasters. [Most of the world doesn’t have clean water.]

We can look on the societal level as well, not just economy.

• This is a shocking fact. Five children die as a result of abuse, EVERY DAY.
• Over the past century homicide cases have risen by 30% – 416%.
• Violence has almost tripled since the 60’s.
• Violence at school has increased 70%-80% over the past 0 years.
• Around half of teens have been victims of cyber-bullying.
• In 1950 the average executive earned roughly 30 times what their average worker did. Now, the executive makes [can’t read text] times as much as the average worker.

It’s very clear what’s happening in the economy.

• Unemployment is soaring all around the world.
• European debt is constantly increasing.
• Portugal, Italy, Greece, many other European countries are on the verge of bankruptcy.
• Central banks around the world are failing.

There is all kinds of data. With the economy you can play with the numbers however you want. The fact of the matter is, out lives aren’t getting any easier, except for the top half percent, I would say, who are making tons of money at the expense of the rest of us.

Why is this mutual guarantee so important? Because when you employ it, you a) guarantee that a society works for the benefit of its members, and b) because by doing that you acquire a consciousness that is beyond the current consciousness. Look at the cells in our bodies. Every human being has approximately ten trillion cells in the average human body. If they didn’t work in synch for the mutual benefit of the organism, of our bodies, we would all die. Human existence wouldn’t be possible if our cells didn’t work in mutual guarantee.

As a result they don’t just guarantee our lives, they guarantee their own lives as well, their own health. They provide for each other—the cells—but with the mind-set of providing for the well-being of the whole body. So they do receive what they need, but they do it for the rest of the body, so that they can maintain the health of the whole body. If we were to work like that, then we would have everything we need and we would have a consciousness that’s all encompassing, complete comprehensive perception of reality, on every level. That’s the idea behind mutual guarantee.

Another thing is important to know about it. Without it today we cannot exist. Gilad just read all this gloomy data… [that was nothing, I was just getting started]…and that’s who we are today. There’s only so much time you can go on with that kind of attitude of humanity. So mutual guarantee today is essential. It’s paramount for our existence, but no one knows how to implement it except for the people who did it before, and this is the true meaning of being alight for the nations. In a time of darkness, there is one nation that is meant to bring the light, which is the method for attaining mutual guarantee, and this all-encompassing perception. That is the Jewish nation.

Granted, the majority of Jews don’t know how to attain mutual guarantee. They work just like everyone else—for themselves—and they excel at it. But deep down, there is this hidden memory that they can awaken and that’s what we’re trying to help everyone do here. That’s the memory of obtaining mutual guarantee, the method that Moses developed and that was developing all through the years.

A question from the audience. There are many people who do good things for the ecology, for society and each other. What’s the difference from what you’re proposing and what’s already being done?

What are you talking about mutual guarantee? It sounds like what she’s saying. A lot of people are trying to practice that.

Several differences I would say. First of all, doing good is good. The question is: did you have to overcome? If you’re a good person by nature and you like animals, so you take care of animals, or you take of the poor or the sick. It’s in your nature; you enjoy it. The question is did you have to overcome your own nature in order to become a giving person in whatever it is that you’re giving? If not, then it means that your own will to receive is leading you toward that. This is not bad in and of itself. The question is: are you becoming non-egoistic in that sense. What if there were no sick people and you love taking care of the sick. It makes you feel good which is why you do it—because it makes you feel good, because maybe you’re afraid that one day you might be sick and need some help.

If everyone took care of everyone else, if we lived in mutual guarantee, there wouldn’t be sick people. We wouldn’t cut more wood than we need. Everything would be balanced. There is plenty of food for everyone. There isn’t any need for hunger. I once read an alarming statistic that the amount of food we throw away, if we could distribute it to the amount of people who are currently suffering from hunger, they wouldn’t just have enough, they would grow fat. So there’s more than we need. We are producing too much already at the expense of our own prosperity.

All we need to do is learn how to balance ourselves. And the question is: is this what you’re aiming for when you do good? If you had to overcome yourself and that’s why you do it, fine. But if you didn’t, and you’re doing it just because it makes you feel good, then you haven’t corrected anything. So it’s fine that you’re doing it, but the question is: are you bring the whole world toward mutual guarantee which is what the world needs today.

So we’re not saying that doing good is not good. We’re just saying that the world needs mutual guarantee—general correction—now. That’s where we want to take it. If we do that, everything will be okay.

Question from audience. Who is evaluating and judging where we are on this path of correction? How can we know if we’re even progressing in the system of correction?

It’s hard to say. What we do know… I want to read something at this point. I’m going to jump ahead, we might read it again later. Slide # 7. The Ramchal who wrote this was a great Kabbalist, a great sage. He actually had many visions about the corrected state of the world and how it should be.

[Speaker reads passage.]

And more, Slide # 8.

That’s the point I’m trying to make. It’s a good question whether we are making progress or not, but whether or not we know if we are making progress, we have to do our best. That’s the point I’m trying to make, because we see what’s happening with the world today. We see that we are going in the opposite direction to correction, to unity. And we see that whatever we’re trying to do—because everyone understands that unity is great and that everyone were united things would be wonderful—but no one can do it.

No government, no organization has yet found a way to unite people. Why? Because it’s inherent in human nature to be disunited. So you have to put an addition, to put some kind of correction over human nature, in order to enable people to unite. That’s what we’re trying to disseminate here. So, whether or not we’re going in the right direction, we know we are doing the right thing, which is bring people a little closer to the method of correction. So if you, questioner, and everyone else help us out, we might be able to do it a little faster. And then we’d all be moving in the right direction for sure. We don’t know how fast we’re going but we know one thing for sure, we’ve got to go faster and we need everyone’s help.

Following Moses, they moved into the land of Caanan, which later became the land of Israel, and they built there a society for everyone who knew the creator, just as we read before. Every man, woman and child knew the Creator, meaning they were united, they were in mutual guarantee. Within the people of Israel the will to receive—egoism—was growing too. So they had to constantly adapt and update or upgrade the method of correction. They were successful up to a point where they broke down and they were exiled again into Babylon, where they were able to unite once again. Then they moved back to the land of Israel.

But this time many of them were not able to correct themselves and they became not Israel. These are the lost tribes, as we call them today. Why are they not Israel today? Because when you drop from the level of unity into the level of disunity—into egoism—you’re not considered internally Israel any more, as we explained before. So they dispersed and assimilated with the rest of the nations where they were living.

The rest of the Israelites who could still maintain unity moved back to the land of Israel. They lived there and fought, mainly themselves, their egos, until at some point two thousand years ago they could no longer maintain their unity as well. They were exiled from each other and as a result exiled from the land of Israel.

Slide # 4, page 53 in the book, it’s written:

The only thing that kept them together in the Second Temple was unity. Once they lost that, they were exiled from Israel. What happens next? Even after the exile, there are people who still maintain the quality of unity and mutual guarantee and therefore maintain the attainment of the Creator and two paramount scriptures are written at that time—the Mishna, which becomes the foundation of Jewish learning and the thing around which all Jews unite from that point on for almost two thousand years—and another very important book is written—The Book of Zohar. It is written and immediately concealed.

The Book of Zohar, which is the basis of the Kabbalah that we study today and that Dr. Laitman employs with his students is really the implementation of the correction method for our time. That’s why the book was concealed, because it wasn’t suitable for the people at that time. Had they read it then, they wouldn’t have been able to understand it properly and use it for the purpose of correction. So it was hidden. Now it is being revealed because we can already study it in the right manner, meaning to correct ourselves, in order to change ourselves, and achieve mutual guarantee again.

It’s not like what’s written in the Mishna or the Talmud isn’t correct, not at all. But people who studied it at that time were able to maintain unity while studying it. They wouldn’t have been able to maintain unity by studying the Zohar. So the Zohar was concealed. It began to appear in the thirteenth century, first through Rabbi Moshe DeLeon, it was concealed again, the Ari talked about it some more in the sixteenth century, but only since the twentieth century has it become completely revealed. Once Rav Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulan) wrote his Sulam Commentary [Ladder Commentary] on the entire Book of Zohar.  

So what happens is that Kabbalists continue to develop the correction method, but they do it quietly for themselves, for their closest students. They teach it and update it according to their time. Since the Ari onward, something changes. Look at Slide # 4.

[Speaker reads passage.]

In other words, from that time onward you have to study Kabbalah. So we are approximately five centuries behind schedule, so it’s no wonder the world is in that state it is.

What is Kabbalah? That’s a question from our audience and from what you were saying that’s actually the correction, that study.

It’s the correction method.

So the question is actually in line with what we were talking about before. Because during the first part of the lesson we were actually saying that our program, our engine, is called the will to receive. And the only thing we need to change isn’t the actual will to receive, it’s how we use. And it makes sense that the wisdom of Kabbalah is the solution, because Kabbalah in Hebrew means to receive. It sounds a bit weird if you think about it, because it’s the wisdom of receiving. But that’s exactly what we need because if we are that will to receive as you were saying, and that’s all we are, and that won’t change, right? We can’t change that, we can only change how we use it. So it seems like learning how to use that correctly is the exact solution.

A few weeks ago Dr. Laitman had an interview with Larry King, and he asked him, so what is Kabbalah? So he explained exactly what you’re saying, that it comes from the word Lekabel [to receive]. We all know how to receive, at least we think it. It’s very easy, very natural for us to receive. But if we do, then why are we never satisfied?

So that fulfillment immediately cancels the pleasure. We get something, we “receive” it, but we can never really receive. It’s like we are always on the verge of reception, but it never fulfills, it never goes inside.

So that’s the trick. That’s what Kabbalah teaches us: How to a) receive endlessly, because that’s the purpose, for us to enjoy and receive but without destroying ourselves and the world, without being ever-deficient although we are always receiving. So to be happy and to receive, and to receive even more and then be even happier, and never get to the state that we feel dissatisfied.

I assume we’re going to ____ as well, because it’s still a bit unclear. How can I receive endlessly and it’s not on your account, on someone else’s account? The paradigm just doesn’t make sense.

We are going to get into it a little bit. If you really want to learn a lot more about it, there is the Education Center that you’re welcome to join. It’s free and you’ll learn a whole lot about it. You’ll really go into details. Basically Kabbalah comes from the word Lechebel [to receive] and it’s a method that teaches you how to receive endless, boundless joy and pleasure while not being constantly hungry, starving. Why is it important? Because the way to receive that endless pleasure is through mutual guarantee.

Now it’s time to connect those together.

Exactly. You cannot do it alone. But if we connect, this is what you… you become Creator-like.

I’m sure a lot of people now have this inner feeling of rejection, on the one hand…

Well they read it in the book. I’m building on that.

I know, but it’s natural when you hear that the solution to any problems you have actually depends on others, it’s a bit repulsive. On the other hand, if we look at ourselves and we see what really makes us happy… There’s research by Caroline Miller. They asked a group of students what they aspire to. They said, you know, a bigger house, a promotion, win the lottery, buy a boat, a whole list of material fulfillments. And then they asked them, What was the best thing that happened to you in the last year? And they all said things related to social relations—I got married, I fell in love, I met a friend… So it’s interesting to see that people think they’ll be fulfilled by material needs, because that’s how we’ve brain-washed constantly by society, but truly, on that fundamental level, it’s internally programmed to actually be fulfilled by what you’re saying, by this mutual guarantee.

Why do we need material things? In order to be able to show them off to others. What’s the point of having a boat if you can’t talk about it? So everything is about connections. We just have to fix them. Hence, mutual guarantee.

Here’s another one on the permission to study and why it’s so important. The eighteenth century sage, The Vilna Gaon [Rabbi Abraham Azulai] wrote explicitly: Redemption of the world depends on the study of Kabbalah. And also in the early nineteenth -century Kabbalists began to proclaim that even children should study Kabbalah, explicitly revoking the prohibition to study before the age of forty. Maybe not everyone knows it, but there was a prohibition to study before you are forty and your are proficient in all the other Jewish studies like Mishna, Talmud, etc. So now they’re saying: No, everyone must study.

Rabbi ____ wrote: “If my people heeded me in this generation [he lived in the nineteenth century] when heresy prevails, they would delve in the study of the Book of Zohar and The Tikkunim ]which is another part of the Zohar, corrections of the Zohar] contemplating them with nine-year-old infants.”

So now we’re at this point where everyone must achieve it together, and the correction method has been prepared. It doesn’t mean we all have to study Kabbalah. We don’t. We do, however, have to realize that correction of the world happens only through mutual guarantee, mutual responsibility—through not just cring for each other, but through realizing that if not everyone, every single person in society, is cared for, just as I care for myself—then eventually it’s going to backlash on us, and we’re not going to be able to maintain society in a sustainable way.

If we want to have a good life we have to find a way to all work together for our mutual benefit, and then we’re going to have a great life. The way to do it, the way to be able to work together, is by implementing mutual guarantee. I’m jumping ahead here, we’re going to talk about it some more, but I think it’s approproate at this point.

There are two ways we can get there. One way is for those with points in the heart. People with points in the heart, just like Abraham, need a specific correction method which is today called Kabbalah. It’s an evolution of the same method that Abraham developed thousands of years ago. They need Kabbalah. But not everyone has a point in the heart. Not everyone keeps asking about the meaning of life—what’s it all for, what’s it about, it’s find that I have what I need, but why do I have it in the first place, why, why, why. For the “why” people you need the wisdom of Kabbalah. For the “how” people—how do I get a better life, how do I make sure my kids have what they need, how do we fix this world—need a different method, because they will not relate to Kabbalah. So for them there’s something else called Integral Education which is a method that teaches them about unity, the importance of unity, and helps them actually unite, without having to learn anything about Kabbalah. Through that unity they begin to discover that internal power that keeps everything together.

We’re doing to talk more about Integral Education later, but you need to know already that there’s a correction method for everyone. It’s applicable for every single person in the world. It’s just that everyone has to know about it and to some extent implement it so that we can all have a good life.

Slide # 8 please. On page 58, Dr. Laitman quotes Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel, even before the state of Israel was established. He was also a great Kabbalist, but he wasn’t writing for Kabbalists; he was writing for everyone. He wrote this:

Not just the Jewish masses, but everyone all over the world.

Slide # 9. [Speaker reads passage.]

He connects the unity of Israel with WWI. He wrote very clearly, and Baal HaSulam also wrote about it, that if Israel were united wars would simply not happen, because they are reflections of our disunity, and once Israel unites, they project this light of unity to the world, and when you are united, you just don’t fight one another, period. It’s as simple as that.

Let’s dedicate the time we have to some more questions.

Question from the audience: Can you explain what mutual guarantee looks like?

Everything you want for yourself, you want it for others. Another example: If you have a sore on your index finger, your whole body is troubled by it, your whole mine. You constantly think about this sore. Your whole body works to heal it. Once the sore is healed, the finger works for the benefit of the entire body. So they are guarantors to one another, constantly thinking about the others’ well-being. That’s how our body works. Everything in nature works this way. That’s why nature can maintain balance and can exist, because everything eventually takes care of everything else, and by doing that everything is able to exist.

I’ll just add to that. Imagine a family, like it’s supposed to be, not maybe the modern family that’s falling apart, but a family as it’s supposed to be. You have kids that are completely different in nature, different desires. They could even be desires that are contradicting one another. But it doesn’t matter because in a family you know how to solve these things, because you have natural care, natural love for each other. The fact that one child wants something and the other child wants another thing, and they could be partly overlapping. It doesn’t matter. You can find the solution to that in a harmonious manner, because you have this love, this care for one another.

That what Chaim was saying. What you want for yourself you want for others as well. It’s the result of the development of care for other people. If you look around, that’s basically what we’re lacking. We’re lacking care for other people—mutual guarantee.

Another question: In a world where no one seems to like anyone else, how can this correction be decided as best for everyone? Giving Ferguson as a good example of division, how can this country attain the correction and from whom?

There are actually three questions here: 1. If no one seems to like anyone else, then how can this correction be decided as best for everyone?

It can’t. Absolutely. We all have to decide that we want correction, first of all. If people don’t feel the need to be corrected, there’s nothing you can do. What are you going to do, force a person to be corrected? That’s why we’re trying to disseminate, to circulate the idea that only if we all take care of each other do we have a chance of surviving. Ferguson is a great example. It’s terrible what’s happening there, but it’s only a reflection of what’s happening all over the country. That’s why there were protests all over the country because it just exemplifies the situation everywhere, that people hate each other and you cannot maintain a society, as we are seeing through Ferguson, through tons of other examples, that you cannot maintain a society if you only think about yourself. It doesn’t work!

2 and 3. How can this country [I assume the United States] attain this correction and from whom?

From us, all of us, all of us who want correction who circulate the idea of what correction means. From everyone understanding that correction is required, necessary for our survival. Once everyone realizes it you don’t need a single teacher, maybe someone to guide you in the right direction, but it happens from within. If you didn’t correct yourself… You can’t follow someone and just completely annul yourself to someone else and saying whatever he says goes, because if you do that then you’re not yourself any more. You have to go through an internal process of realizing that what this person says is true for you and then you want to do it.

We’re also getting into the role of a teacher, which is basically only to show you the way, and then you have to walk the way. In short, no one can do it for us. We have to decide that we want it for ourselves. If we don’t, then we don’t, and we can wait and see what happens. But if we all decide that we want correction and that correction means unity, then we all come and unite.

Another question: I’ve changed my life where I seek nothing in return, and if it’s harder then it’s worth doing first. I also study Torah and many Kabbalah texts, currently Sefer Yitzerah. Is this the right path?

Well it’s definitely on the path. There are changes. Just take it into account. As soon as you get on the path there are changes, because the will to receive keeps growing. So you’ll probably want to learn other books as well, and you’ll see that at some point it’s very hard to overcome the evil inclination, and here and there you succumb to it. But it’s good. Keep working. You’re definitely on the right direction, as long as you want correction, and as long as you realize that correction comes through unity with other people, you’re doing great.

Date and topic of next lesson announced.

Thank you for being here with us. We’ll see you next week.