Egoistic Altruists

Comment: Scientists claim that the greatest egoists are altruists, and it has been proven on a neurological level and on the economic level. There is even a term “altruistic punishment,” which is when we punish those who harm society, those who don’t make people happy, those who harm our freedom, and we enjoy doing that and as a result our ego grows even more.

Answer: Of course we can buy a person if we give him presents, serve him and show him love. He will thus receive continuous pleasure from us, will enjoy, will get used to the pleasures, and we will bring him closer to us. On the whole, this is a female’s work: when a woman supports and cares for her man, he feels that she is the motherly figure and needs her.

I don’t see anything wrong with that. That’s the way we egoists communicate. If I didn’t need someone, I wouldn’t even notice that he is standing by me. I always notice only what I need and what I can benefit from or the other way around, what disturbs or threatens me. This means that we notice everything that affects our desire whether negatively or positively.

The biggest ego is indeed the altruistic ego. It is a very sophisticated and developed ego. When I realize that behind every simple good action, like helping a small animal or taking care of a baby, I gradually tame it or I deceive it by filling its desire so that it will not be able to go on without my filling. I thus invoke a certain reaction in it and it feels that it owes me.

Question: If we only see the ego behind every action from now on, where will it lead us?

Answer: Nowhere. It is an advanced phase of the ego by which we understand how to work with other people who are also egoists and that if you treat them altruistically, you will buy them and will not have to manage them by force, but simply treat them nicely.

It is the same egoistic benefit but on a higher level, and as scientists realize today, this is how all the people will feel: that it is merely the same egoism. It is similar to the relationship between a mother and a child: The mother loves her children in a normal human way and gives them everything, and as a result, she needs them and they need her.

Comment: But people are sure that motherly love is true altruistic love.

Answer: We have to look at life a bit more seriously. I greet, respect and also love my mother who is still alive.

I know how I treat her, how I should treat her, and how she treats me, but we should understand that it is nature that invokes this feeling in us and not the person who educates himself to be like that. This is the difference.

We must understand that man operates according to the law of nature that spurs him this way, and this is the reason that he chases food, sex, a family, and love of parents.

It is different if he does that against his ego, if he educates himself to establish totally new relations with everything that is external to him, around him, the still nature, the plants, the animals, and human beings. Then every change he undergoes of his own will, as a result of education against his initial instinctive egoistic nature, a change that is the result of force and effort will be considered an achievement and therefore something of which he can be proud.

Egoistic Reshimot develop inside us, which are data records that are dictated to us, and we have to ascend above ourselves in order to attain a higher egoistic state. How else can I understand the next state if it isn’t depicted in me egoistically? This is how I feel it, “I want!” I want not only this world; I also want the upper world, the future that is above death and above everything. I want to see everything, to control everything, to understand and to feel everything.

Then I am ready to hear what the wisdom of Kabbalah says and how it helps me from now on. This help is given to me so that I will be able to act against my nature and then I invert myself internally and begin to think differently, not with the intention of in order to receive, but with the intention to bestow, not caring about myself, but by caring about others.

In this state I feel peace, a filling, and I don’t yearn for it anymore. It is totally different from the love of a mother to her child. She feels an instinctive love by which she fills herself, but here I fill others and not my own child to whom I feel a common personal human feeling, but total strangers who may be opposite from me and by whom I am repulsed. This is how we will reach the fulfillment of Kabbalistic consciousness. Although it is a great effort, we will succeed.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 3/4/16