Does Faith In The Future World Make Life Easier?

Question: If everyone said that the soul is the most important thing and the body is nothing, people would probably have a different attitude toward death?

Answer: There is no doubt.

Question: Why don’t they?

Answer: First, because no one in the general population feels this, and second, it is anti-egoistic. After all, if this is directed against egoism, then who wants to work against it?

Here it is necessary to think, to make efforts, to act somehow, to organize something. What will I get from this? Nothing in this world: no food, no sex, no family, no fame, no knowledge.

Question: It is probably easier for a person to live with what is thought up in religions about the existence of a future world. But how much does the hope that there is something somewhere psychologically improve a person’s life?

Answer: Today, to improve a person’s life psychologically, it is unnecessary to be religious.

We see religions gradually fading. Recently, a lot of non-religious people have appeared who despise different beliefs of people because religions do not specifically answer our questions.

If a person needs to transform this life a little, he has Hollywood, the Internet, or something else. That’s enough for him. He will create any illusory world for himself.

What is there after death? No one knows. Therefore, a person no longer believes in this. His ego outgrew these tales and can no longer believe, much less sacrifice his time and intellect.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah”, 12/11/18

New Life #274 – The Self And The Ego, Part 1

New Life #274 – The Self and the Ego, Part 1
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

The ego is self-love. Without it nothing could exist, including both pain and pleasure. The ego develops via four stages in nature: the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking or human levels. People are unique in their desire to exploit others for their own pleasure. We want what others have. We enjoy harming and humiliating others in order to feel superior. When people want to connect with others, they reveal resistance (the evil inclination). We have reached the peak of the ego’s development and are evolving into a new form of development based on mutual connection and harmony with others and with nature as a whole.

From KabTV’s “New Life #274 – The Self and the Ego, Part 1,” 12/29/13

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18 Years After ​​9/11 : What Will Really Prevent The Next Disaster?

From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 9/11/19

The signs of solidarity, mutual respect and social resilience that we saw after the horrible 9/11 attack in New York, have all disappeared. Today it is painfully clear that people unite only under great duress or trouble. It has been fifteen years since that tragedy, and against the backdrop of global terror, the United States is more frightened than ever of another national disaster. As a result, the government has declared September as a National Preparedness Month, where citizens, business owners and communities are encouraged to prepare for any unexpected crisis or emergency that the US might face. Yet alongside the defense strategies, the one thing that will bring lasting security and balance to our lives is unity. The connection between us has a tremendous power that can prevent any unexpected disaster, and most importantly, to guarantee our good life.

Presidential Proclamation – National Preparedness Month, 2016

Love Is The Fulfillment Of Others’ Desires

Question: Why do Kabbalists constantly use the word “love”?

Answer: Our matter and the matter of all nature is desire. Love is mutual satisfaction, when I satisfy your desires and you satisfy mine, and only thanks to this state do our pluses and minuses become connected, and we turn into one single spiritual body, into one single desire.

Question: If instead of “love,” I say “the force of attraction,” is this correct?

Answer: Say “the force of gravity, unity, or connection.”

Remark: After all, the phrases “love of one’s neighbor” and “love your neighbor as yourself” are so overused and confuse us so much.

My Comment: I understand. I remember I also stumbled on this. Now I cannot imagine some carnal attraction as a synonym for love. After all, these are animal instincts.

Question: The method of Kabbalah consists of establishing the correct connection between people. Through this, as Baal HaSulam writes, we invoke energy from the states we were previously in. The energy begins to affect us and bring us together in the same way that molecules once came together. Only their rapprochement was unconscious, and we must do everything consciously.

What is this action of drawing closer to other people? What should we do?

Answer: We should perceive the desires of other people and try to fill them, and they must do the same with your desires.

Perhaps, we will somehow be able to feel the desires of others, although it is very difficult. We have no idea how to actually do this. If we want to fill them, we will begin to feel how much our egoism counteracts this. We will then have to fight with ourselves, put ourselves below others, and this is already a spiritual action.

Question: How will I fulfill the desires of others if I cannot even fill my own desires?

Answer: You do not have to. Leave your desires alone and fill others’. Then you will see that only in this way you can fill yourself.

Question: But they have a lot of desires, won’t I only be busy filling them all day long.

Answer: It means you will be busy filling yourself all day. Only through others can you fill yourself. That is why humanity is becoming more and more devastated.

Remark: Yes, but I do not feel that way. I do not enjoy filling them. Only if I love someone, then, yes.

My Comment: Therefore, you must demand that you have love for them. This is already above your egoism.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 12/11/18

Uniqueness Of The Creator, Part 10

Consequence of the Influence of the Upper Light

Question: I exist in some capacity and does the upper force constantly affect me? Can I call it upon myself?

Answer: Of course. But only to the extent that you are in the right environment. Through this environment you can invoke the upper force, and in no other way.

You can enter integration, mutual communication, with it only if you try to unite with the kind of people who have the same goal: to achieve some sort of equivalence with the light. Then, if you make small movements toward this, the light immediately changes in its movement toward you and moves you toward itself.

Question: How can I feel it? How will it be expressed?

Answer: It will be expressed in you beginning to love others more, appreciating and understanding that they are necessary for your development. But this is still egoistic.

Question: Is this called a “sensation of the Creator”?

Answer: No, this is not yet a sensation of the Creator. This is a consequence of the impact of the upper light. Other changes will then slowly occur—your birth in the spiritual world, in the quality of light.

Remark: To love others, to treat them kindly is good. But for me the “sensation of the Creator” is something that infinitely fills me.

My Comment: This is true, but it happens in accordance with your attitude toward others!

Remark: You narrow everything down to some kind of relationship…

My Comment: I narrow this down absolutely clearly and concretely. Kabbalah is a concrete and practical science. Therefore, in no case do I want to confuse my listeners.

Kabbalah does not say a word about anything abstract. Only in a group can you master it and make sure that it is right.

Question: Is the group just a means?

Answer: Yes, and then it becomes the source of correction, a technique, and the goal. In the group, as in a spiritual Partzuf, in the soul, the Creator is revealed.

Question: What gives a person a sense of the Creator?

Answer: One passes into another state, into another world, into another dimension. A person begins to understand what happened to him throughout his life, and where this leads him. One parts with one’s ideas about life and death, and does not fear death. A person becomes immortal. One understands everything that happens. A person becomes driven solely by one thing: how to help everyone else achieve the same state.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah”, 12/10/18

New Life #1149 – The Phenomenon Of Violence

New Life #1149 – The Phenomenon of Violence
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Violence and outbursts in the still, vegetative, and animate levels of reality increase as the human ego develops. The human being is like a volcano and erupts as a way of coping with growing internal pressure and imbalance. There is no reason to be violent toward others as we are all activated by the same upper force and can achieve balance with one another through this force. All troubles come to us to teach us that we need to connect with this upper providence. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches how to relate everything to this upper force that is the source of all balance and peace.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #1149 – The Phenomenon of Violence” 8/6/19

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Kabbalah And Psychology: Goals, Tools And Methods Of Attainment

Question: What is the difference between the goal, tools, and methods of attaining Kabbalah and psychology? For example, the purpose of the wisdom of Kabbalah is the revelation of the Creator to the created beings in this world.

Answer: If we want to develop a person as much as possible, to reveal and fill all his negative inner potential with something positive, then this is the revelation of the Creator in a person.

Psychology, however, studies behavior and mental processes of people and animals in order to make their lives more comfortable at the level of animalistic existence. If a person values only his animalistic body and is not above it in anything, then psychology can help him in some way.

We see in ourselves that most of our problems cannot be solved with the help of psychology. People visit a psychologist out of the inability to calm down and adjust themselves in any other way. They do not want to take any calming drugs, but they have a special kind of attitude to life when they need calming talks.

Question: Psychology is based on a person’s work with his consciousness, subconscious, and a method of convincing oneself that everything will be alright. What is different about the tools of the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: In Kabbalah we only examine what we need to change, and then we draw the forces inherent in the sources upon ourselves. These books in Kabbalah are a necessary means of advancement. There is no such thing in psychology.

Question: The third thing is the difference in the methods of attainment. What is the difference between the group method in Kabbalah and in psychology?

Answer: The fact is that the method of attainment itself is absolutely opposite. In Kabbalah, the group is necessary in order for me to completely connect with it, merge with and enter into the friends, melt in them, and depict the group, not myself, as one single whole.

Then in this group, I will discover the general force, which connects us. It was in it even before, but I could not identify it, and now I reveal it precisely in our complete connection. This force is called “the Creator.”

Yet, psychology does not pursue such goals. It is directed to working in a group only in order for a person to get rid of the hindering fears, habits, and all sorts of restrictions.

Question: What happens in Kabbalah?

Answer: I dissolve myself in the group. I want, as they say, to disappear in it. I want the group to become my self. This is an exit to a completely different level of thinking and feeling.
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Uniqueness Of The Creator, Part 9

What is Perception of Reality Made of?

Question: The purpose of nature is to develop all its parts to the state of polar opposites and then combine them. Why is this so? What is the meaning of such development?

Answer: Only in this way do we reveal everything. Our comprehension consists of differentiation and integration of all parts of what we observe.

Remark: We see that our nature, our desire to receive, is constantly evolving, becoming more powerful, more egoistic.

My Comment: In the same way, the ability to integrate this, to capture the interconnection between all parts, is developing in us. This is what our perception of reality consists of.

But the next Kabbalistic awareness of reality is that there is no reality as such. We only project our inner properties onto the upper light, and we feel and consider this picture, which we ourselves create with our feelings, as the world in which we exist.

Question: “Upper Light” is a new term. Why do Kabbalists in their sources use it instead of the concept of “Creator”?

Answer: The Creator/Upper Light is a property of bestowal and love, and therefore, we associate it with the light of the sun, the light of the mind, with something higher.

Against the background of the upper light, the properties of bestowal and love, all our egoistic desires paint a three-dimensional, living picture of this world. But actually it doesn’t exist. I only observe my internal properties.

Therefore, to the extent that I am moving closer and closer to the properties of the upper light, this world dissolves and becomes more and more elusive, until I find myself in absolute light.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah” 12/10/18

Uniqueness Of The Creator, Part 8

What is Perception of Reality Made of?

Question: The purpose of nature is to develop all its parts to the state of polar opposites and then combine them. Why is this so? What is the meaning of such development?

Answer: Only in this way do we reveal everything. Our comprehension consists of differentiation and integration of all parts of what we observe.

Remark: We see that our nature, our desire to receive, is constantly evolving, becoming more powerful, more egoistic.

My Comment: In the same way, the ability to integrate this, to capture the interconnection between all parts, is developing in us. This is what our perception of reality consists of.

But the next Kabbalistic awareness of reality is that there is no reality as such. We only project our inner properties onto the upper light, and we feel and consider this picture, which we ourselves create with our feelings, as the world in which we exist.

Question: “Upper Light” is a new term. Why do Kabbalists in their sources use it instead of the concept of “Creator”?

Answer: The Creator/Upper Light is a property of bestowal and love, and therefore, we associate it with the light of the sun, the light of the mind, with something higher.

Against the background of the upper light, the properties of bestowal and love, all our egoistic desires paint a three-dimensional, living picture of this world. But actually it doesn’t exist. I only observe my internal properties.

Therefore, to the extent that I am moving closer and closer to the properties of the upper light, this world dissolves and becomes more and more elusive, until I find myself in absolute light.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah” 12/10/18

New Life #1148 – How To Arouse Love In Couple Relationships

New Life #1148 – How to Arouse Love in Couple Relationships
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Couples need to learn how to build, inspire, and revive their love relationships by rising above egoism. We need to learn how to understand our egoistic human nature and why we cannot tolerate one another. Couples who want to undergo such a process need guidance in a group course where participants show each other how much they try to rise above their own desires for the benefit of their partner. Love is like an animal and must be constantly fed. Rising above egoism opens new horizons according to the principle, “love will cover all transgressions.”
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From KabTV’s “New Life #1148 – How to Arouse Love in Couple Relationships,” 8/1/19

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Integrate In The Ten—Make Space For The Thought Of Creation

The thought of creation includes everything, even me, but I myself aspire to attain it. The Creator has given me this opportunity, as if He had created a white spot in me called “the deficiency for the Creator.” I develop this deficiency and direct it to the upper one.

I confirm that indeed there is none else beside the Creator, and I myself am included in this concept. On my part, I do not want to change anything in the entire reality; I only want to attain the Creator, to connect with the thought of creation. This means adhesion with the Creator.

The more efforts we put into this, the more we develop, change forms, advance along the axis of time. All kinds of changes will take place in us, and we will feel that we are beginning to take His form. This is like in our world: by getting closer to a person, we gradually adopt his habits and tastes. This is how we begin to take the form of the Creator, to adopt His thought, and it becomes ours. This is how we reach adhesion with Him.

The Creator created the thought and we are part of it, included in it. Besides, He gave us the opportunity to reformat ourselves in likeness to this thought and thus be included in the Creator. This thought enters us as if a program is loaded into the computer but according to our own desire and request.

Then it reformats and organizes us so that in everything there is in us, in all the 620 elements and desires, we begin to feel the upper force that is operating within us. Gradually, this force fills us as if a progress bar is running on the computer indicating the percentage of the download and reaches one hundred percent. Similarly, the thought of creation operates on us according to our efforts, and then it enters us. It means that we are getting filled with the Creator and adhere to Him.¹

Are the efforts to adhere to the Creator personal work or work in the ten? The fact is that all personal work consists of integrating in the ten. Although, it might take an entire lifetime or sometimes more than one lifetime. Look at how much humanity has been wandering until it finally understood that there is no choice and that it is necessary to work on connection. Indeed, otherwise we are incompatible with the nature of the Earth and it will erase us from the planet. How much time, suffering, and work did it take to realize this?

All the work before integrating into the group is just preparation for the real work. When I begin to integrate into it, the progress bar as if begins to move, which indicates the percentage of the program uploaded. To the extent that I integrate in the group, I make space for the thought of creation to enter and fill me.

To the extent that I free space from myself and integrate in the ten, the thought of creation can fill my connection with the group, that is, the corrected Kli. This is how I get filled and come to similarity and adhesion with the Creator. This adhesion becomes increasingly stronger all the time.

The work on adhesion with the Creator is possible only in the ten. In the past, that is, in the past degrees of humanity’s development, this was not the case, and there were other ways to reach adhesion with the Creator. However, in our time, it is the only way.²
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/22/19, “There is None Else Besides Him”

As If We Put On Glasses And Begin To See

2,000 years ago, the Temple was destroyed and the people of Israel began their wanderings around the world. We got used to living in exile among other nations and often even succeeded in doing so. Sometimes, on the contrary, the nations of the world settled scores with us. Hatred of the Jews steadily grew, one wave rose after another, and recently a tsunami of anti-Semitism has been rising.

The problem is that we are not correcting the shattering. Anti-Semitism is the result of our neglect of the possibility of achieving correction. The exile ended, but only in potential, not in practice. Many would dream of leaving the land of Israel and returning to exile. After all, holiness is only in the unity that we can build between us. Without unity, there is no holiness, and we are still in destruction.¹

In fact, the destruction was a correction. You cannot call it corruption because there was still nothing corrected that could be corrupted. It was the shattering of the boundary between the receiving and bestowing desires, the boundary between the Creator and the created being, between the properties of the Creator and the created being. Therefore, it was only for the sake of correction.

The desire to enjoy existed before the shattering, only it was hidden. After it was revealed, the created being could already begin to work on it and rise to the Creator. Each time the creature reveals its disparity with the Creator, which gives him the opportunity to correct this discrepancy and get closer to the Creator.

This disparity already existed before, but now it has been revealed. That is, there is a revelation with respect to the created being, as if we put on glasses and begin to see the malfunction that we did not notice before.²

The destruction of the Temple represents the merging of Bina with Malchut. Therefore, there were two destructions, according to the two levels in the spiritual Partzufim: Dalet-Gimel (4/3) and Gimel-Bet (3/2). The first Temple was destroyed at the level of Mochin de Haya, and the Second—at the level of Mochin de Neshama. Therefore, the destruction of the First Temple was much more powerful and significant. But the destruction of the Second Temple was more significant in that it meant a complete exit from spirituality.

The First Temple is a spiritual union in which all desires are combined together with the intention of bestowing to the Creator at the level of Mochin de Haya. There was a huge struggle between people and each one within himself for the sake of maintaining this unity and not falling. But egoism was steadily growing and in the end, the shattering did occur. The people of Israel went into exile; that is, there was a gap between the levels—the spiritual Partzuf exhausted itself. After the exile, the people were returning to spirituality, building a new Temple. (The First Temple is like Malchey DHGT [Daat, Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet] and the Second Temple is Malchey TNHYM [Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, Yesod, Malchut] in the world of Nekudim, which were broken).

The destruction of the Second Temple was already the final exit from spirituality—all went into intention for their own sake. Since then, the whole nation except for some special people, Kabbalists, entered the process of the continuous descent of generations.

It is impossible to compare the generations that lived immediately after the destruction of the First or the Second Temple with our contemporaries. They felt a much greater connection with each other. Holiness still illuminated them from afar and the sparks from the destruction of the previous Temple fell and made an impact. Therefore, there were still great people in those generations even after the destruction of the Second Temple. We see what great books they left for us: Mishna and Talmud.

Many were still in spiritual attainment. The fall did not happen instantly. The light was exiting the Partzuf gradually, until we were almost in total darkness by the time of the Ari.

From the time of the Baal Shem Tov and onward, the awakening from below began. Baal Shem Tov did a great job reviving spirituality, and he was followed by Baal HaSulam. There were other Kabbalists who lived in the time between them. The last great Kabbalist of our time was Rabash who left us the whole method of correction that we use today.³
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/21/19, “Ninth of Av”

Uniqueness Of The Creator, Part 5

How to Feel the Creator

Kabbalah offers the following to a person: If you want to feel the upper force, you must enter into a group of like-minded people and begin to dissolve inside it. By preferring the opinions and desires of the collective to your own, no matter what they are, by clearly changing your opinions and desires to theirs, you will begin to feel how you are getting “outside yourself.” At the same time, it is clear to you that you enter into others, but you cannot act otherwise. You have to get outside and get into something.

Exiting oneself is the first stage of attaining the Creator. It is called the restriction of egoism. I must restrict myself in order to begin to feel others instead of myself.

To the extent that I do this, I begin to feel a completely different world, different connections between people and objects. I feel the existence of the general force of bestowal and love that connects them together.

I begin to feel all people as puppets who are absolutely clearly operated by the upper force in relation to me, and this is how I myself am also operated in relation to myself, to them, and to the upper force.

All this continues until in exactly in such a way—in small steps, with my own  realization—I accumulate sensations and knowledge about this upper force, which permeates me, connects me with others, and enables me to act outside of myself for the sake of this group of people or even this general power, the Creator, that is manifested in them. This is how I progress and study this phenomenon.

This feeling is called “the upper world.” The power of bestowal and love that exists, governs, and holds all this, including myself, is called “the Creator.”
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 12/10/18

New Life #1146 – Delegitimizing The Nation Of Israel

New Life #1146 – Delegitimizing the Nation of Israel
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Without a connection between us, Israel is not a people or a nation, but rather a mob. Only Israel has the problem of delegitimization because it did not originate as a biological nation. In ancient Babylon, Abraham gathered people from all ethnicities and composed a spiritual nation on an ideological basis. Today, there is no ideology that connects the people of Israel, and the nations of the world feel the people of Israel as a foreign, superfluous, and harmful element. It is up to the Israeli nation to delegitimize the Israel of today and build the true nation of Israel through mutual connection. Israel will only be truly legitimized and have global sympathy when we begin to work on connection and love above division and hatred.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #1146 – Delegitimizing the Nation of Israel” 7/30/19

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Turn Your Face To The Wall—Discover Bestowal Really Exists

“And Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord.” This describes the state of a person who has worked for many years on his correction, performing all the necessary actions in order to eventually discover that he was doing it all for the sake of his egoism and that he has no possibility to act differently. This realization comes to him after he has accumulated a measure of suffering and disappointments and he continues despite everything. As the saying goes: “Anything but leave.”

He then begins to feel that such a thing as bestowal really exists, which is outside of him, outside of his will to receive. If he works with this new desire for bestowal, revealed within him, he feels that unlimited possibilities are hiding in it.

Before that, it is impossible to understand what bestowal is, why it is needed, and why it gives unlimited possibilities in comparison to egoistic reception, which is limited, meager, and narrow. It is impossible to receive for my own sake anything more than a faint illumination, “a tiny candle.” But by developing the desire to bestow through the work on the greatness of the Creator, we reveal this ability up to the size of the Creator. We can then be in unlimited bestowal, and the Creator connects with this desire and reveals Himself in it.

For many years a person works and acts, but it turns out that all this is inside egoism. One’s frustration and confusion accumulate until a person suddenly reveals in subsequent blows what it means to exit oneself and become a bestower. One feels that there is nothing but constant annulment and subjugation. You just have to bow your head, accept whatever happens, and nothing else is required.

This cannot be done in advance. But when an illumination comes in response to a person’s efforts, one reaches the degree of Hezekiah: finally, he turns his face to the wall, knowing how to pray, ask, annul himself before the Shechina. He sees that the group, the society, the wall, and the Shechina are all the same.

This is a transition from the will to receive in which we exist by nature, to the recognition that subjugation and annulment are what’s most important. “To turn to the wall” means to leave no partition between the Shechina and one’s heart, no shell around the heart.

To pray, turning to the wall, is to open one’s heart to the Shechina, the force of bestowal. Both a person and the Creator act with the force of bestowal, and they both want to remove all the partitions between them.

By peeling the shell from the heart, that is, removing the egoistic intention from all desires, we reveal the desire to bestow. Everything already exists: both the Creator and the person’s heart, and one only needs to remove the armor, the shell from around it. This is what we need to pray for.¹

The transition is that initially I was entirely in egoism, but did not realize it. I then discovered that I acted only for my own pleasure, but I wanted to be in bestowal, to remove the egoistic armor. It is like a boiled egg from which the shell is already easily peeled. If a person has matured, he begins to peel off his shell and feels more and more that he needs help.

Help comes in response to prayer, and the prayer cannot be for myself, but only for the ten, for the whole world. The Shechina is in the dust and we pray to raise it from the dust, to raise its importance in our eyes. Otherwise, we will not have the opportunity to bestow to it because we do only what we consider as important.

So we ask that the Shechina, that is, the force of bestowal, be important to us, and then we will be able to bestow. If bestowal is important to me, I will engage with it, and if it is unimportant, I will forget about it. Therefore, we ask the upper one to give us the feeling of the importance of bestowal so that we can do the work. Without such importance, nothing will happen, we will be unable to do anything.

Of course, any fool can work for the sake of something important. However, it is necessary to be very wise in order to do such a stupid thing and to ask for the importance of the quality of bestowal. This is what we are fighting for: to make bestowal important in order to be able to bestow. It is impossible to explain to the will to receive why this is necessary—only the point in the heart can understand this.²
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/10/19, “And Hezekiah Turned His Face to the Wall”

“A Trendy Anti-Semitic Fad“ (Breaking Israel News)

The largest portal Breaking Israel News published my new article “A Trendy Anti-Semitic Fad“:

If the use of Nazi symbolism in fashion was manifested in isolated cases, there would be only slight cause for concern. But when this trend is backed or glossed over by giants such as Amazon, the biggest online sales platform in the world, we cannot remain indifferent. From home decor to clothing and accessories, the popular website is infested with products depicting Holocaust victims heading to the gas chambers and images glorifying the Third Reich. This trend comes to shake us up to the realization of the urgency and pertinence of uniting our forces. By becoming one unified people, will we be able to not only to avoid trivializing the atrocities of the past, but also to prevent history from repeating itself.

All kinds of merchandise with pictures of concentration camp victims and images exalting Hitler are now easily found in online stores. There is already a fashion trend called “Nazi chic” gaining popularity throughout the world.

International fashion companies have caused uproar in recent times for using anti-Semitic imagery and hate symbols in their designs, such as striped garments including yellow stars resembling the clothing Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust, and swastikas.

Minimizing the Holocaust as a Tragedy

Once taboo, the glorification of anti-Semitic manifestations and Nazi symbols is becoming increasingly acceptable in fashion, art, music, sports, festivals, and even amusement park attractions, such as a swastika-shaped ride recently closed in Germany where the public display of Nazi propaganda and memorabilia is illegal. Just this past year, however, this ban was lifted for computer games.

Amazon recently confirmed that it will launch operations in Israel in the coming weeks, including a Hebrew website for local customers and retailers. This comes during the timeframe when the Auschwitz Museum has condemned online advertisement and sales of products featuring starving Jews from the Holocaust and Nazi symbolism being promoted as an “ideal gift.” The Jewish memorial demanded a more strict verification system for retailers “as sometimes things go beyond just bad taste and become disrespectful. Especially when images of victims are there.” Online shoppers have also been shocked by the offensive merchandise and some e-commerce companies, including Amazon, have agreed to pull some specific items from their websites in certain locations while others remain available online in different countries.

The trend to trivialize the darkest chapter in Jewish history is worrisome because, as we can see, it is now found in basically every human field. Moreover, polls conducted in Europe show that the memory of the Holocaust is starting to fade. In America, one of three people queried on the subject do not believe that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

What about Making Connection Fashionable?

Today’s growing hatred toward Jews and people’s indifference to historical Jewish suffering reminds us of our task. This grotesque trend is an opportunity for us to reflect on the reason for anti-Semitism and to remember that we have a method of connection to prevent the atrocities from recurring.

Over many centuries, our ancestors fought to maintain their unity above their growing selfishness. But 2,000 years ago, Jews succumbed to unfounded hatred and were exiled from their land. Since then we have lost the ability to be a light unto nations because we have lost our unity. The moment we lost our unity was the moment when anti-Semitism as we know it began.

Only when we rekindle the brotherly love we cultivated centuries ago and share the method for achieving this with everyone, will the world will stop hating and blaming us for all its troubles. How is this possible? It is possible because, whether we like it or not, Jewish unity determines the state of the world and its fate. Through our connection, we stream a positive, uniting force into the world, a force the world desperately needs. Conversely, our separation denies humanity this power and evokes within it hatred toward Jews. This is the cause of the nation’s aggression toward us and why they perceive us as the source of all evil.

In his essay, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” Rav Yehuda Ashlag writes about the important role of the Jewish people: “The Israeli nation was established as a conduit to the extent that they purify themselves [from egoism], they pass on their power to the rest of the nations.”

Now is our time to become a “light unto the nations” through our example, to make unity, peace and calm the only trendy fashion in the world. We cannot allow atrocities to happen again when we have a method of prevention through our connection. It is indispensable to stick to this goal of brotherly love among all Jews above all obstacles because our lives depend on it and because the well-being of the world requires it of us.
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Evolution Of Desires, Part 13

To the Level of Absolute Interaction

Question: A person consists of intention, desires, feelings, emotions, reason, and thoughts. Are there are two kinds of intentions: for oneself or for others? Is there only one desire—to enjoy?

Answer: Yes. Nothing else. This is a quality of nature. That is, receiving fulfillment or avoiding suffering is basically one and the same.

Feelings and emotions are manifested in desire, the magnitude of its filling. The mind lets us accurately realize what we want.

Question: Before I thought that the mind is separate, as it were, or vice versa, that desires serve the mind?

Answer: The mind on inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels can serve instinctive desires. When a person develops oneself, then the mind begins to serve one’s human desires.

In fact, we need reason in order to circumvent inanimate, vegetative, animal, and even human desires, and begin to rise to the level of absolute interaction, higher than our nature. This is the so-called “faith above reason,” when we seek connection with each other in spite of all other desires and intentions.

Question: Is our goal to correct the natural egoistic perception of the world, egoistic desires—toward the neighbor?

Answer: Not even a neighbor, but a union: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That is, I must love myself and my neighbor as well. This means absolute unification in order to create a common system. Therefore, I want to be its integral part.
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From KabTV’s “Basics of Kabbalah,” 7/19/19

Everything From One Thought—And Back Again

There is nothing but one thought—the thought of creation, which includes everything. Only we, the created beings, still do not understand and feel it. But we exist within this thought and are governed by it. All our work takes place inside of it. This thought is the whole creation, its plan, and there is nothing other than it.

Everything is resolved in thought, and everything is created by thought. There is no matter; all of reality is included in the thought. It is interesting that modern scientists, being absolute materialists, say that the universe is a thought. Researchers of the human brain claim that all our thoughts, desires, and decisions are outside of a person and that the brain is only a device that captures this thought and transfers it to us.

Thus, science is gradually approaching this fact that Kabbalists discovered a long time ago: There is nothing in the universe except for the thought of creation and we exist inside of it. Although we divide reality into forces, matter, feelings, and reason, in essence, only the Creator’s thought, within which we exist, operates.

We need to attain this thought of the Creator in relation to the created being and then we will attain Him—not Him Himself, but His attitude toward the created being. It is only this very thought that exists. All the various opposite properties that we feel are meant to reveal the depth and the uniqueness of this thought.

There is none else besides Him, but we attain this fact from the opposite, from the numerous actions and manifestations of the Creator in relation to us, which are very diverse and contradictory. It is precisely all these paradoxes and discrepancies, which are preventing us from realizing what is happening and from agreeing with it, that push us to such a development that by combining all the contradictions above reason, we attain the Creator. It is impossible to attain Him other than from the two opposites that combine together and complete each other.¹

From the Creator’s side, the potential action, called the thought, is enough. For the Creator, the end of the action is in the initial thought, that is, the uncorrected and corrected state of the created being exist together, creating a black dot called the created being. The rest is the development of this dot and its self-awareness, and from its self-awareness to the awareness of the Creator in order to understand where it came from, who created it, and who is developing it.

It is like a movie rolling inside this dot. All of us, the whole universe, all the worlds are in it. The attitude of the Creator, the upper light, is called “the thought of creation.”

Therefore, there is only one thought from which the entire universe emerged—the thought of creation. It already defines all our rewards, our efforts, and everything we experienced on the way.

From the side of the Creator, there is nothing bigger than this thought. But we, the created beings, are able to attain it only when we separate from Him and begin to act independently. Inside this thought, other additional thoughts appear: the four Behinot (phases), the Partzufim, the worlds. We study what in practice comes out of the black dot, which potentially includes the entire thought of the Creator, the entire process that was initially invested there.²
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/20/19, “There is None Else Besides Him”