From Babylon To Rome, Part 2

Human Nature: To Enjoy at Another’s Expense

Question: What ideology united the people of Israel in the times of the First Temple?

Answer: It was the ideology of Abraham who, being a spiritual leader of Babylonians in the times of King Nimrod, discovered a general governing force of nature, the Creator.

This force not only unites everything, but also acts as the opposite of itself—disconnecting. All of nature exists on the symbiosis of these two forces: connecting and separating.

Question: Baal HaSulam writes that Jews gradually adopted the “ways of their neighbors to enjoy life, as their egoism required of them.” What is the problem with this?

Answer: Human nature is egoistic. Its opposite nature is altruistic. In our world, i.e., in our consciousness and sensation, only the egoistic nature of the world is revealed, and altruistic only to the extent necessary to maintain its existence.

There is another side when the altruistic nature of the world is revealed, and the egoistic exists only to maintain its existence.

Question: But why does it say: “Adopted the ways of their neighbors to enjoy life”? What is wrong with enjoying life?

Answer: In our world this can happen when you are thinking only of yourself. In general, there is no problem with enjoying life. The problem lies in the fact that you are enjoying life at the expense of others.
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From KabTV’s “Systematic Analysis of the Development of the People of Israel,” 7/8/19

Until The Desire Ripens

Question: How do two opposite desires coexist in a person when the point in the heart awakens in him? After all, this is completely different from what a person felt before and has practically nothing to do with this world.

Answer: It has nothing at all to do with it. This feeling emerges quite unexpectedly, just as any spiritual level imperceptibly manifests.

And now you are already in a certain attainment, a certain connection, and even in a more or less conscious relationship with the Creator, and you feel something new. Moreover, each attainment emerges as if it happens for the first time.

Question: Why does one not follow the other? Why must there be a descent?

Answer: It is because it does not happen like in a movie where you sit and watch flickering frames. You must insert your desire and your preparation into every frame. You undergo all kinds of states until the desire fully ripens.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 2/2/20

Shame Develops Man

Question: Suppose I was invited to visit. I agreed with the host that I would come over and sit at the table with him. But how do I tell him that I refuse his food?

Answer: This is really a problem. But you come to a state where you simply cannot take anything from the table. The attribute of shame develops in you.

This is not earthly shame but a great feeling that you cannot overcome. It binds you and does not allow you to accept anything from the owner.

Question: What should I do next with this shame?

Answer: What will happen next, we are yet to study. But it is the shame that leads and develops us.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 2/16/20

Time Of Accelerated Awareness

Question: How did you find out everything that you are talking about?

Answer: You will know this as well. I assure you that in the next one and a half to two years from now you will know almost the same thing as me.

The methodology today can be presented in an accelerated form because people are now completely different. They can absorb a huge amount of information themselves and correctly understand it. I’m sure that you will realize all of this very quickly.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 12/15/19

Coronavirus Is Changing Reality, Part 7

Can People Who Keep Up with Nature’s Plan Contract the Coronavirus?

Question: Thousands of people united at the recent Kabbalah convention in Israel. Immediately afterward, the global outbreak began. We connected and look at what happened. Did we cause this?

Answer: No, we did not cause this. First of all, the outbreak started before the convention; it just was not that obvious.

We were sure that nothing would happen to the convention participants. Since tens of thousands of people all over the world were connecting with each other physically and virtually through good efforts, there was no danger here.

I am sure that none of our friends, wherever they were, wherever they went to participate in the mirror congress, fell ill. There were no problems with anyone.

And how could there be if we were gathering in order to connect with even better connections between us. We move together with nature’s plan; therefore, we cannot be affected by the virus that affects egoistic connections between people, societies, and countries.

Question: Is it possible to deduce the following formula: people who will learn to connect with each other correctly won’t be affected by this virus?

Answer: Yes. I can give you my word for that. We just need to understand that this is not 100% because there are individual cases that we can analyze and see why this happened in our ranks. However, I do not think that we will hear about a huge number of Kabbalists being affected by the virus. It is impossible. We will just wait and see.
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From KabTV’s “Coronavirus is Changing Reality, Part 7,” 3/12/20

Coronavirus Epidemic Forecast

What forecast can be given for the development of the coronavirus epidemic, will it spread further around the world or can it be stopped? There are several levels of protection here.

First of all, it depends on the dissemination of the science of Kabbalah, on the fact that people will at least hear about balance and harmony of the world, about positive connections in human society, which nature obliges us to, and that our mismatch to the laws of nature gives rise to all these viruses. This must be explained and disseminated through all social networks. Everything is in our hands.

Do not be afraid that you are small and think that nothing depends on you. It is our responsibility to do our job, to explain that nature directs us toward our goal, and we need to start acting accordingly. We cannot get rid of the coronavirus—if not this virus, then others will appear. The era of the end of correction is the time of intensified blows.

Kabbalah teaches that the best cure for the virus is unity between people. But humanity has found a different, opposite remedy against the epidemic: isolation, so as not to infect each other. It seems that there is a contradiction here, but actually there is none: Under such conditions unification is expressed in isolation.

Caring for others in such an epidemic is expressed in separation, isolation. My love for my neighbor is manifested in how far away physically I am from others. Because of this, I become closer to them internally, mentally; after all, I am caring for them, and therefore, I move away physically. My alienation action is in fact a connection.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/5/20, Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”

“What Are The Positive Impacts Of The COVID-19 cCrisis?” (Quora)

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are the positive impacts of the COVID-19 crisis?”

Aside from the ecological benefits that the stay-at-home orders spanning the world’s continents have brought about, such as significant drops in pollution and carbon dioxide emissions, another major positive impact is that the COVID-19 crisis put spokes in the wheels of our over-inflating egoistic, exploitative and manipulative interactions, heated social division and tense international relations, which were leading to a world war.

Also, while ordered to stay at home, we are now given time to calm down from our usual rat race, reconsider what is most important in life, and learn a deeper perspective of how nature works in order to exit this crisis into a better state.

Essentially, if we use this period we are now in to upgrade our awareness of ourselves as parts of a single interconnected and interdependent system of nature, it would result in an immense positive impact, both for ourselves and for nature in general.

The COVID-19 crisis is a prime example of how nature’s interconnectedness and interdependence is becoming increasingly revealed among us humans, as it forces us all into a common global problem.

We would thus be wise to learn from nature, to adapt our human thoughts, attitudes and relationships to the integral way in which nature operates.

If we fail to use this period in order to upgrade the quality of our connections, then we can expect nature to respond with further blows, whether an intensification of the current pandemic, or other natural disasters.

The principle is that according to nature’s interconnected and interdependent form, we, as the human level within nature, have to assume the same form in our attitudes and relationships to each other, in order to experience a harmonious and peaceful existence.

We have the free choice to make this leap, since our egoistic human nature that involuntarily prioritizes personal benefit over benefiting others sets us up in opposition to nature’s consideration of the whole.

Our selfish makeup is what led us to create a society functioning by each one trying to profit off of everyone else. However, as we see with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and other crises in our world, such egoistic development has reached a limit.

Nature is now trying to wake us up to our need to make a further step in our development: to exercise positive, supportive, encouraging and considerate relationships in a place where we by default relate negatively to each other.

Yet, as much as nature leads the horse to water by giving us this global shock, it still cannot make the horse drink. We will still have to make that leap from negative-egoistic relations to positive and mutually considerate ones by applying our own free choice.

This becomes possible if we study how nature functions as a complete integral system, and how each of us together need to act similarly in order to reach and maintain balance in the system.

Essentially, we need to reach a state where we care about others to the same extent as we care about ourselves.

If we thus use the time when we are bound to our homes in order to upgrade our awareness of nature’s unifying principle, and implement it in our relationships, we will then see far-reaching positive impacts of the COVID-19 crisis—a shift into a completely new and harmonious state among humanity the likes of which we have never experienced before.

Disasters In The World Are Modern Egyptian Plagues

Question: Today, we see various blows of nature all over the Earth. In Africa, a locust infestation is destroying hundreds of thousands acres of crops and threatening a food disaster.

In Europe, a hurricane rising from the South to Scandinavia is causing very heavy damage. The coronavirus, which started in China, is spreading.

All this resembles the ten Egyptian plagues that the Lord once sent to Egypt. Have we become one big Egypt?

Answer: Yes. Today humanity has become one single whole. You can see what happens with any disaster, even a small one. It affects all countries: communication is interrupted, all kinds of supply chains are cut off. Today, we cannot live without each other. That is why it happens in such a way. Nature beautifully teaches us that we are mutually connected and that we can neither break this connection nor arrange it in the right way.

Question: Do we need to know the place of each character in order to correctly resolve the unfolding performance?

Answer: We need to enter integral nature as its necessary, important, and connecting part.

Question: How can we find this place?

Answer: It all depends on us. We must educate ourselves in this way and understand that by not being integral, we violate the integrity of nature and introduce negative perturbations into it.

Question: If we take the story from the Torah, Moses first came to Pharaoh and his sorcerers and began to speak on behalf of the Creator; he was a messenger.

On one hand, we see the gradual concessions of Pharaoh, but each time he took a step back, each time he strengthened himself and said: “Go, pray to your God, but I will still not let you go; you will not leave. Stay here.”

Will this game of humanity with nature follow the same path: “Yes-yes-yes, we agree, but no, nevertheless, we will do everything the way we did before”?

Answer: In general, of course, we, as stubborn humanity, as that stubborn Pharaoh, will hold on to our own. We, as a stubborn, as they say, stiff-necked, Jewish people will also hold on to our own.

The only one who works here against Pharaoh and against the Jews is the Creator, the upper force of nature, which unites and wants to bring everyone to a positive and correct connection. This is where the conflict arises.

In principle, the Jewish people are not far from Pharaoh; they want to obey Pharaoh. It is the Creator who is plotting here, not Pharaoh or the Jews. The Jews are ready to live there normally, they still shout at Moses: “What do you want from us? Look how good it is here! We have never lived like this before. The Pharaoh protects us, guards us, gives us an opportunity to live in the most fertile place in Egypt, in the land of Goshen. Where should we go?!”

I remember coming to Lithuania in the 70s to go to Israel from there. Many people were able to leave from there but not from other parts of Russia. I was told: “Where are you going? Why do you need this? Look how good you can live here!”

Question: How can a person differentiate in himself the part that wants to follow the laws of nature, to follow the Creator who demonstrates these miracles or plots?

Answer: There are some rather strange people, like me, who got up and started leaving. I was also in denial. This is the so-called “point in the heart,” which pulls a person to be separated from all those who resist and oppose. It longs to be free.

Question: How long will humanity have to face these global catastrophes?

Answer: We still have the third and fourth world wars ahead of us. So, there is still time.

Question: Where does this internal resource to not give up come from?

Answer: It comes from our egoism. After all, it is a force of nature, a great force of nature. It is all nature that we now observe and see. Everything we see around us, all the galaxies, all the stars, all the vast infinite distances, all of it is, in fact, in us, inside of us. It is all our great force.

Do you understand what it means that we actually include all the energy of the stars, all this alleged cosmic vacuum together with all the supernovas? Do you have any idea what this force is? And this is all within us, inside of us, inside people. We only see it as supposedly outside, yet it is our reflection. And this is only a small part that is in us.

Moreover, there are also entire worlds. The spiritual worlds are also in us, within us. You have no idea what a person is. When we gather it all together, we will find that we are the Creator.

Question: What do we need to gather together?

Answer: All of our energy, all of our qualities, we need to gather all of it together in order to make us integrally connected. Then we will have one system called “Adam.”

Question: What should people in Africa who are suffering from locust infestations, in Europe where hurricanes and fires occur, and in China currently fighting the coronavirus do?

Answer: Think about how to balance nature. Even with such small, toy-like examples. All these floods are not cosmic in scale. Therefore, we need to understand that we can do this, as they say: “with few losses.”

Human beings are not small creatures. They are enormous. They are dinosaurs that grab, devour, and swallow the stars, the entire universe, everything—nature’s most evil force.

Question: What will motivate a person? Is it fear or a desire for something bigger, better than now?

Answer: Suffering will motivate a person. We see this at all previous stages of our development, only suffering drives a person forward.

There are two types of suffering: either suffering felt in the animalistic body or suffering we feel in our mind. That is, when we imagine where we are going and how we should still get on our feet, turn in the right direction, and go.

A person must understand that the only thing affecting him is the upper force of nature, which requires him to interact correctly with all others so that he balances all the forces of nature through the actions between himself and his own kind.

Question: If we go back to the picture described in the Torah: there were Jews, there were the people of Israel, there was Pharaoh, there was the Creator, and there were also residents of Egypt. What should people associate themselves with in this game?

Answer: What does Pharaoh do? What does it all lead to? Pharaoh is a great seemingly negative force of nature. He pushes the Jews to agree to come together and exit Egypt.

Egypt is egoism. All of humanity is inside its egoism. To exit it, to rise above it, means to exit Egypt. With the help of all the Egyptian plagues, we are forced to break out of egoism.

The most important thing is for us to want it. Humanity should realize that it must rise above egoism. It means to exit Egypt.

Question: What prevents a person or, on the contrary, engages him so that he would say: “Yes, I want a new relationship, a new world”?

Answer: There are two forces: the stick and the brain. Where the stick hits, the brain must turn to it and ask: “Why am I being hit?” We can then avoid the next blow every time. If we use our brain and start seeing our cause-and-effect development and where it leads, we can avoid further suffering.

Yet, our head does not work in order to analyze and avoid further suffering but in order to get out of it. It works to try to get out from under the stick and, as it were, to continue existing as we wish for a little longer.

The Jews thus ruin themselves. They use their exclusivity given to them by nature in order to exit egoism and pull others after them in order to remain in egoism. They want to remain in Egypt a little longer. After all, it is not so bad there.

Question: The force of nature purposefully triggers both egoism and the second force that connects everyone. It does it all. What should a person do?

Answer: A person should choose the correct path and ask nature (the Creator) for support on this path. The correct path is only in connecting with each other through good relations. Israel and humanity will then connect and create such a system of relations between them that the Creator will be revealed in it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman,” 2/11/20