We have been with you for many years now, some for a great many years, and we’ve been studying the wisdom of Kabbalah. When people come to study Kabbalah, they learn about Sefirot worlds, Partzufim, Aviut, Zakut, Zivug de Haka’a, lights, Kelim [vessels]—to learn the special mechanics between the light and the desire. It is unknown where this light is. It is “out there.”

Where is the desire? It’s also… we don’t actually attribute it to us. It turns out that we’re learning something abstract, but we do learn it. We have the “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” and “The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” which is what we have been learning, without any seeming connection to ourselves.

Afterwards, we started studying the essays of Rabash. He also didn’t write them before he had new students, in the emergence of a new era. When I brought him students, then instead of the five veteran students who studied even with Baal HaSulam, all of a sudden there were new guys, 25-30 years old. So he started writing these social articles. Why? It was because he saw that here you could actually implement the wisdom of Kabbalah, but in a small group, a small society. That’s why he wrote these articles, such as “They Helped Every One His Friend,” how we should connect in a group, etc.

As we advanced, the next stage came. In the next stage we started circulating a little bit, disseminating the wisdom of Kabbalah outside the group, and people started coming in. Many people came, learned a little, left, came again, left again, and time passed.

Then came an even more special time, when the world got into a crisis. The crisis was around long before 2008, but no one would talk about it. Experts saw that there was a crisis a few years back, but it was forbidden to talk about it.

Once the world was in global crisis, not just an economic crisis where the stock market fell or some bank collapsed, but the world started viewing itself as being connected in a bad system, where they are trying to do something together, unified, like the united Europe, and so on. We have no choice; we depend on each other, and it is not up to us. However, the laws by which we are connected to each other are egoistic, so instead of using each other correctly, we spoil it. Previously it was not like that.

International commerce—international connections between universities, companies, factories and countries—previously was fine. It was a give and take. You could develop. No big deal. What was the problem? The problem is that there’s a special law in the world once it becomes clothed in an integral connection, a network. It’s not the same as me being in economic ties or political ties or cultural ties with another. It requires a new attitude between us, and we do not know or understand that new attitude between us, because our nature is egoistic. So although we are all connected integrally around the globe, we are continuing to work with each other as before—capitalistically, egoistically—the way we used to. That is why these ties don’t work, and that is the crisis.

Therefore, basically the crisis is between the new attitude we have to introduce in our relations, introducing to the world, which is connected in a new way, but we cannot achieve this form. We do not even know about it. People think they can continue existing as before. And they do. But the world, human society, including the still, vegetative and animate, including people, are already a system where you have to change the attitude. And specifically we, not the still, vegetative, or animate, have to do it. So the crisis, if we think deeply into the reason, is in our perception. We do not perceive the kind of network of connections that we are in and how according to this network and the connections that are now appearing, how we should conduct ourselves.

This is where the wisdom of Kabbalah comes and says, “Know this.” It explains basically to those who study Kabbalah, as you used to connect among yourselves in a group—they helped every one his friend, and being friends with one another, and we’re all as one man with one heart and we mingle with each other—the same laws are gradually emerging throughout the world, whether the world wants it or not. The world is already beginning to behave according to these connections, and if you don’t come to humanity and teach humanity what is going on today, then you are not implementing the wisdom of Kabbalah, which you must—for which you receive this knowledge, this teaching.

Thus, now the whole world is a group, and you have to teach this group, each and every one and all of them together, how to conduct themselves properly according to the rules of the group. That’s why we started to disseminate, but disseminate in an appropriate way for the world, which we call Integral Education or the wisdom of connection, or other such names. You can’t go out with the title of “Kabbalah” to the world. So that’s where we stand, but in the end, of course, we will have to teach everyone the essence of the network of connections between us, and to the extent that we move into this network and feel it, how we’re all connected, we will begin to feel these connections among us and we’ll discover what these connections are. These connections are the rules we learned between the Sefirot and Partzufim and worlds in the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Where is this spiritual world? That spiritual world is in the connections between us. If we change the egoistic connections between us, this kind of one-way connection between us is cut off—connections, not global one, into what we find in the global network—then we begin to see this network as a spiritual one. The whole world then becomes one Malchut—Malchut de Ein Sof—and the connections between us are the worlds—Adam Kadmon, Atzlut, Beria, Yetzira, Assiya and this world—until we correct all these ties in such a way so that between us is the world of Ein Sof, the world of infinity, unlimited, and we’re all connected to one place, meaning one desire, called Malchut de Ein Sof.

It turns out that there is no difference between the wisdom of Kabbalah and integral education (IE). But IE is, as we explain to kids in a simple manner, and then we teach them not using these simple examples, with toys, but we begin to study it, the way you teach, for example, doctors. First they’re taught on samples and then they’re taught on people. The same applies here.

For now we’re going out to the world with our initial, preliminary explanation, which is called IE or the wisdom of connection, but then we certainly will here and there add to it some information from the wisdom of Kabbalah, even without speaking about the wisdom of Kabbalah. And finally we talk about that too. People will accept it as being natural.

Therefore, the laws of the group, the laws of the workshop, and the laws of the world that should now be implemented are the same—the laws of integration—until we actually become as one man with one heart.

I want to add a few words about the approaching ONE Convention. I think that this convention should be one where we learn that the wisdom of Kabbalah and the wisdom of connection are one and the same. That the wisdom of connection that we are now using to approach the world, is the initial, preliminary explanation, without worlds and this vast wisdom. Because we still can’t discover it now; there’s nothing to discover. Afterwards, when we actually begin to relate to each other in bestowal, the minute you practice enough and you receive from above the light that reforms, in such a way that all of a sudden you feel that you are relating to others, to your friends, in bestowal, then in my attitude of bestowal to my friends, I will feel that between us there is light—of Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Haya, Yechida (NRNHY)—all the world of Assiya. Then, more and more and more depending on the kind of connections and attitudes that I have toward the friends.

So the same Kelim (vessels/tools/receptacles), the same desires, and the same lights are our corrected desires and that the level of connection, the power of connection in our corrected desires between me and others, is the light of NRNHY that I will discover, and these degrees that we learn about in the wisdom of Kabbalah are the distances between us, the extent to which we approach each other in our hearts, in our desires, connecting to One.

Thus, the more I rise in these degrees from here to Ein Sof means that I am generally getting closer to everyone, to all those broken Kelim, and I become as one body with them. All the lights converge and all the Kelim converge and we return to a state called Malchut de Ein Sof. So in the ONE Convention, the main purpose, among others, is to talk about the wisdom of Kabbalah and the wisdom of connection as one wisdom. There’s no division here. There’s nothing artificial here that you have to separate. It is the same wisdom of how we, humanity, in this dispersed and shattered world, this alienated world in all its parts, how it becomes one once again.

Therefore, today our practical act as we go out to the world with the wisdom of connection, and once we begin to discover the connections between us, we will discover that we’ve actually come to the wisdom of connection, which is the wisdom of Kabbalah.

The above article is based on the special Q&A session with Dr. Michael Laitman in preparation for the upcoming North America ONE Kabbalah Convention, taking place on August 8-10, 2014 in New Jersey. Here is a short video from this Q&A session:

Watch The Full ONE Convnetion Q&A Session with Dr. Laitman Here »