In the News (from Astronomy.com): “Venus Express searching for life — on Earth” Scientists using European Space Agency’s (ESA) Venus Express are trying to observe whether Earth is habitable. Silly, you might think, when we know that Earth is richly stocked with life. In fact, far from being a pointless exercise, Venus Express is paving the way for an exciting new era in astronomy. One thing has become obvious from the study of Earth using Venus Express: determining whether a planet is habitable is not going to be easy. Although the observations may not tell us anything new about Earth, they will allow us to unveil far-off worlds, making them seem more real than simply dots of light.

My Comment: Science is not yet capable of making conclusions about life in the universe. We cannot even detect life on our planet… It’s possible only to determine whether there are certain conditions for life’s existence.

At a certain stage of man’s development, he becomes interested in the existence of life in the cosmos. However, as his attention (desire) grows, he aspires to search for that which is eternal and perfect, something higher than the corporeal, beyond the animate level of life. In other words, he aspires to the spiritual world.

At that point, the question of whether other forms of life are possible in the universe disappears, as it becomes replaced by the aspiration to attain the next level of development – the “human” level.

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Three questions I received about difficult family situations:

Question: How does one reconcile one’s past? It is a past dotted with illness all my life and “child abuse” early on, culminating with a statement at a family reunion in front of my Grandparents that my Mother wished I would have died and my brother lived. How does one rid or clear one’s thoughts of this? Am I not receiving information correctly or do I not see what is in front of me?

My Answer: You have to forgive them! This is the Creator’s way of solving yet another problem through you. This will become clear to you soon.

Question: My father left most of his money to one son, leaving the rest of us just a bit. Needless to say, this has caused much friction between us. What do you suggest I do, as my anger is building to the point that I want to ruin my brother, and I have the means to do this very easily? I don’t even care about the money; now it’s just about principle.

My Answer: You have to obey your father’s will, and your brother is not to blame for this. Don’t change anything, but just agree with it. The Creator has set up this situation for you through your father and other relatives. Instead of focusing on all the other feelings, fulfill yourself with the aspiration toward Him.

Question: I am a young man but I have already endured too many losses of my relatives who were really good people. And now my father is in the hospital waiting for a surgery after having a heart attack on my granddad’s remembrance day. On the one hand, maybe this surgery is care from Above, so that something more terrible won’t happen to him. Still, I ask myself: why was he not guarded against any trouble? How can I keep getting up and believing every time?

My Answer: Our life should not be an escape from suffering, but an ascent above the suffering in order to connect with its source: the Creator.

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A question I received: I feel a greater evil being revealed within me in accordance with the work I put in. I know that I should give to the greater group according to the principle, “love your neighbor as yourself,” but I am stunned by how much unjustifiable evil there is… What should I do?

I was not able to bestow and fulfill my functions in the group. I have even distanced myself from the group. I am sensing that I am now following the principle, “each person judges according to his own lack.” In addition, I no longer have any desire for bestowal because I feel insecure. I cannot heal my mind or heart of this problem. How should I continue?

My Answer: You must completely stop criticizing them or considering them as your problems. In actuality it is just you perceiving them that way. Each one of us has an uncorrected desire, and by rising above this desire, we attain the World of Infinity.

The desire, in all five worlds, is uncorrected. And the greater your desire is, the greater you will be once you correct it. For now, you must do what is required of you each time. This is how you will proceed step by step towards the goal, by correcting your desire. And that’s how we climb the mountain.

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A question I received: You have said that the crisis can cause people to ask questions about the meaning of life. But can’t a regular person, who has absolutely everything but still feels restless, ask the same questions?

My Answer: “The Creator’s ways” are unknown to us. Today’s crisis is only a minor scare. The real crisis is still ahead. It is yet to manifest in all sorts of ways that have no connection to money. The problem with money is no more than a minor inconvenience. After all, it doesn’t pose an actual, deadly threat, but merely an absence of security and food, which may possibly be overcome. This is not the kind of thing that looms over you like a terrible monster, ready to devour you whole.

So far, the state that is being revealed to us is not apparently the Upper Force, against which we cannot do anything. We still think that we can rectify our life. After all, the financial system is artificial, and so we think that we are capable of handling its collapse. So, you can’t really call this a blow.

The blow that will come will be “the finger of God,” as the Pharaoh’s sages once said. That is when people will feel that what’s happening is not accidental, that all the blows are purposeful. And this will be the beginning of the Creator’s revelation to the people of all the nations. People will then begin to perceive everything as part of the natural process, which cannot be solved through artificial means.

Therefore, today’s crisis isn’t real. However, we at Bnei Baruch still try to use it as an example to help explain that humanity has entered a new period of evolution.

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A question I received: There are many methods that teach people how to exit their egoistic desires. How does Kabbalah view them?

My Answer: All these methods will disappear in the very near future because they don’t hold the power to draw a person out of his egoistic nature. The only thing they can do is numb our egoistic desires. But because our desires are growing and all these methods act in a direction opposite to this growth, they distance a person from the society and from life. It’s because what they offer a person is a complete separation from all the problems by way of meditation and other “tricks.”

In addition, these methods are incapable of creating a connection between people. As a rule, people who use these methods separate from each other. Nature, however, is pushing us toward unity. This is why these methods are proving ineffectual.

Kabbalah, on the other hand, will remain for two main reasons. First, Kabbalah works with a person’s huge egoistic desire, which has developed throughout human history, and which people cannot escape. Second, the method of Kabbalah explains how to utilize this enormous egoism without diminishing it, but rather by changing its application toward benefiting oneself and others. This is the work one does with one’s egoism without denying one’s nature and anything in this world, and without destroying any of one’s natural qualities. After all, Kabbalah tells us that it is necessary to use everything that we have.

In addition, with the help of the science of Kabbalah, we can effectively correct the division between people. All other methods only speak of the fact that we must love each other. Take for instance, the situation in India: The caste system that exists there in order to divide people does not prevent them from talking about “love of others.”

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A question I received: When society tells me that I must have a new condo or a can of Coke, I don’t have to make any efforts of my own to be influenced by them. Does the same principle apply to spiritual desires? All they have to do is tell me that spirituality is something that’s good for me, or do I also have to do something myself?

My Answer: You don’t have to do anything more! Whatever your environment considers important is what you, too, will start to respect, to desire, and to want to have. When the people around you repeatedly tell you about how important an object or an event is, then you won’t be able to stop thinking about it; it will not let you sleep. This is because it cancels your identity, your personal “I”!

You will struggle and ask: What do I live for if I can’t have this or that? I am wasting my life without it!” You are not the owner of yourself, because society determines everything. Whatever goal it sets for you is the goal you will pursue. With the right “aiming” of the correct environment, anything is possible, even attaining the Creator!

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A question I received: I am a student of the virtual Learning Center and I, along with others, am awaiting and very anxious for you to acknowledge this question. In the book, Kabbalah, Science and the Meaning of Life, on page 128, I found the following quote: “Because our caveman would not have the sense that perceives the wall as Matter or as Form in Matter, he would be able to go through walls as if they were air.”

Unless I misunderstood the information, the statement is inherently wrong. Just because one doesn’t know an object doesn’t mean one cannot interact with it. The text mixes concepts from quantum mechanics and the reality of the macro world. The applied logic is not logical. Matter will always be perceived as such, regardless of the form it takes on because our senses are made to perceive matter. In cases where our five senses are not sufficient, matter can be perceived with proper instruments.

Example: when I did my first scuba dive, I was surrounded by a huge number of forms and shapes I never saw before. Yet, my senses were able to register them. Please clarify the above statement.

My Answer: Let’s start from the opposite: there are walls that we do not perceive. Do we stumble upon them or do we go through them without noticing?

Everything exists in us, in our qualities, or in our five senses. If they were different, they would depict a different world to us. The book talks about a “caveman” because besides our qualities, we have also accumulated information and systems that create the “surrounding” illusion.

Until we acquire a quality that is opposite to us – bestowal, we won’t understand the qualities of anti-matter, and we won’t realize that the world is “depicted” inside us.

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A question I received: Kabbalah bases part of its reasoning on a certain chronological order, scaled by the millennia of the Babel Kingdom’s existence and by the dates of Adam’s life in Babylon. However, the work of a modern mathematician in the area of historic chronology (Anatoly Fomenko, Professor of Mathematics at Moscow State University and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences ), casts doubt on the generally accepted sequence and the dates of events. For instance, he dates the Egyptian pyramids to the 11th-14th centuries B.C.E. as per the dates of Zodiacal images found in them. This means that egoism wasn’t growing for 2000 years. The dates of the books can also be wrong, with manuscripts mistakenly dated as being more ancient, when, in fact, they were written later.

Kabbalah, being an extension of science beyond our world into the spiritual, relies on the sciences of this world, including history and chronology. What if the actual chronology is radically revised: can it be possible that the Kabbalists are also mistaken in their descriptions of historic events (the dating of Adam’s life as well as the lives of other Kabbalists?

My Answer: Up until now, all doubts about the Bible’s validity have been proven wrong, historically speaking, which confirms the authenticity of the Biblical story. The Biblical calendar starts with Adam – the beginning of man’s correction in this world, and it concludes with the final correction of all people, throughout 6000 years.

Over the past 5769 years, everything predicted by the Bible (as we, Kabbalists, know) has come true. The Book of Zohar, written 2000 years ago, says that our times (from the year 1995 on) is the time of this book’s revelation. And this is coming true! There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. However, everyone has the right to doubt everything in the world. This is the right of every scientist.

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In the News (from CBS News): “Super-Resistant Superbugs” Scientists are sounding the alarm that we have been overusing antibiotics – and that the germs have figured out ways to become resistant to them. “The antibiotic era is really only 60 years old, but as we get more and more resistance going on, it acts more and more like the pre-antibiotic era,” says Dr. Robert Daum, head of infectious diseases at the University of Chicago Children’s Hospital.

My Comment: This phenomenon is programmed: we will not be able to escape suffering, because through it, our egoistic nature brings us to the recognition of the evil within us. This occurs in order for us to desire to replace our egoistic nature with one of love and bestowal.

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In the News (translated from Gazeta.ru): “A National Non-Ideology” The modern world is structured such that no nation needs a national ideology or identity. More and more people could live without belonging to a state, as they are involuntarily becoming “citizens of the world.” The existence of a state is justified only if it helps people to build a more harmonious physical life.

My Comment: This is why Kabbalah proposes its model of the new society, as well as a scientifically sound justification for its suggestions. By implementing this model, we will reduce the time people spend “searching,” but more importantly, we will reduce their suffering!

Yet, despite the aforesaid, in Russia the search for a “national ideology” is almost synonymous with the search for the meaning of life on a national scale. Therefore, in this country, such an ideology may very well help to bring all the people (rather than separate individuals) to the understanding that the meaning of life, for a nation, does not lie in the plane of its physical existence, but rather, its physical existence is a medium for attaining the upper, eternal meaning – the revelation and attainment of the Creator.

In order to achieve this goal, however, there must be a special education and upbringing. Otherwise, the people will continue to wander around in the dark, as they have been doing for centuries.

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