Restriction Is A Condition For Attaining The Creator

The feeling of the Creator regarding souls is perceived as infinity. This is a connection between worlds, souls. But infinity is the highest level and it remains so.

We try all the time to graduate our relationships so that we perceive them in certain doses, and in accordance with them we will call our states steps.

We will already be able to somehow communicate with the Creator, that is, give Him names along these degrees, along these boundaries, because we limit His image toward us.

If I say “father,” “mother,” “high,” “low,” “kind,” “evil,” and so on, I limit my perception, somehow define it, and thus I can talk about something. Otherwise, I have no other states, except for some unclear admiration, which also disappears. We cannot imagine the state of unlimited filling.

Although the Creator has a great desire to delight the created being, and we relate to Him as a source of infinite fulfillment, knowledge, and sensation, we must limit ourselves toward Him, make a restriction on ourselves and go further, putting forward certain conditions in order to define Him within some boundaries, limits.

We exist in the Creator even now. But where is He? We do not feel Him. We can begin to feel Him only if we limit our perception. We have a restriction, then a screen, then striking, a certain amount of light.

Only to the extent that we can give to the Creator can we receive from Him. This is the only way!

Otherwise, all sensations disappear. They can only be in a limited amount, which can increase more and more.

We can achieve an infinite sensation, but it will be in an infinite sensation.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 8/12/20

Pay Attention To Nature’s Actions

Question: We talk about many problems and catastrophes and the possibility of even greater misfortunes that may befall the world. What can you say that is kind and optimistic to people who follow what you do, listen to what you say, and read what you write?

Answer: I would advise all people to pay attention to what nature is doing to us.

Nature is a living entity that generates and incorporates all of us. It is higher than us in degree, so there is nothing in us that does not happen from nature. So we need to pay attention to what exactly it requires of us.

Do not treat it with contempt, as something inanimate or at most vegetative and animate, but as a higher being, understanding that it acts reasonably, selectively, consciously, in order to bring us to the next level.

Nature has developed us from nothing, from zero, brought us to our present state, and leads us further. Let’s not assume that we have already completed our evolution. We must come to its very last state, to complete interaction with each other and with nature itself. This is a step we must take now.

This step we can take either under the influence of brute force of nature, or intelligently, consciously. I think we’ve come to that. Now everything depends on how we explain this possibility to all people and lead them after us.

Question: It means, not only does humanity have a chance, but you believe that it will take advantage of this chance and be able to find the right decisions and right actions?

Answer: Of course.
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From KabTV’s “Today’s International Situation” 6/18/20

Will Online Communication Lead To The Severing Of Social Ties?

Question: Now everyone is talking about the emergence of online professions, in particular, a digital transformation. Everyone learned how to use Zoom. In general, a large-scale digitization took place in two months.

How can one remain a full-fledged member of society if, in online professions, you will constantly interact with a computer, with numbers?

Answer: I do not see any problems here. Many of my friends, despite the coronavirus, continue to work from home. Most of them love it. And the enterprises themselves like it too because this is a big budget saver.

I think that the majority of enterprises will develop in this direction. A person will work from home.

I also switched to such a job. Previously, up to 500 or 600 people gathered in our center every morning, not counting those in different parts of the world who connected to our broadcasts. And for the last few months I have only been teaching online, and I must say that the number of people is only constantly increasing, and everyone is happy with it.

Question: Do you think that the severing of social ties due to online communication will not happen?

Answer: I think, on the contrary, new, correct, good social connections will appear. And breaking past ties is only for our benefit.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 5/24/20

How Can We Know The Ultimate Goal Of Our Existence?

Question: How do we find out the ultimate goal of our existence? A person is limited to living in a certain country and has certain financial and physical capabilities. Where should he start the shift? Is this some kind of internal process, an internal decision?

Answer: A person will be unable to see, define, understand, or realize his final state. For example, if a two or three-year-old child suddenly saw himself as an adult on the stage of a theater conducting a huge orchestra, he would not understand what kind of person was standing there and waving a stick, while the rest were pulling strings or blowing horns.

We don’t see our final state because we don’t have any predisposition to it. We can only read about these final states, we can only imagine them in a very limited way, with certain conditions that Kabbalah sets before us, saying that we should not rush too far ahead.

See what is in front of you, the final states will be explained to you, and you will get an idea of the overall picture. But most importantly, these are the states that you must gradually realize in your spiritual progress.
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From KabTV’s “Together about Important Things” 7/14/20

The Information Record That Is Everything

Question: We can say that spiritual advancement pushed Mikhail Lomonosov, who was born into a poor fisherman’s family, to leave his native village and go on foot to Moscow. Let’s say that people do not have such an awakening, there is no such aspiration, but at the same time they can listen to us now. Where could they start? What can turn them on?

Answer: If they have such an information record that they should turn on, then they turn it on, and if not, then no. This is destiny.

Question: They say that 50 percent of your destiny can definitely be changed, and 50 percent of events you just need to accept. I am not suggesting that this is correct. But it turns out that everything that happens in life can be changed?

Answer: No. You can only be what you are as recorded informationally in your original state. It contains all the steps you must take on the way to your final absolute state. But you can speed up this path, make it more convenient, and most importantly, do it yourself. You can enjoy realizing it.

Such a realization of the path of life, when you make yourself a person of the future, is a great pleasure. It gives you fulfillment and creativity. But in general, you still keep going and translate into reality the informational record that was in you initially.
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From KabTV’s “Together about Important Things” 7/14/20

The Age Of Enlightenment And Emancipation, Part 6

Rejection of the Religious Perception of the World

Question: In the first half of the 19th century, the struggle within the Jewish people began to subside, and it is perceived as a single whole. However, another problem arises, the era of the Enlightenment begins, the development of sciences, the acquisition of civil rights by Jews, and freedom of movement.

This again led to a split among Jews: on one side, the Orthodox society, and on the other side, people who began to leave religion. That is, there was a rejection of the religious perception of the world.

Why, for the first time in history, Jews, as well as other nations, began to leave religion en masse and engage in science?

Answer: It is because religion did not explain to them that love for one’s neighbor is its main law.
Following religion consisted only in the fulfillment of prescriptions, fasts, and all kinds of holidays.

It obliged people to observe traditions, but at the same time it did not explain at all why this was necessary and to what it should lead. Therefore, a person who did not feel why he was doing things and what positive purpose they had, simply renounced religion.

Question: How did this period affect the correction of all humanity and the role of Jews in this process?

Answer: I believe that this was a necessary period, firstly, because nothing happens in vain. It was necessary to sober up and cut off the figurative fulfillment of the laws of the Torah without any thoughts and feelings when they were realized only because this must be done, scrupulously and mechanically at that. After all, this is not what the Creator requires of us, but that we correct our thoughts and feelings, mind and heart.

Comment: In principle, such a mechanical religious approach is quite egoistic. I follow the traditions, and for this I am entitled to something in this world and in the other world, paradise is promised to me.

My Response: This is an egoistic, medieval approach that did not provide a person any development. Naturally, the great sages knew and understood why and for what purpose everything was happening this way, but there were only a few of them.

Question: It was necessary, because it kept people within limits and gave some kind of confidence in life?

Answer: Yes, this was demanded by the current period of human development. Everything depends on the development of the person’s inner desires.

Question: Why weren’t all these laws revealed 1,000 years ago and their disclosure took place precisely in the short period of Lurianic Kabbalah?

Answer: There are periods of accumulation of some internal tensions in a person and in society, and then they are released, as a rule, in an explosive way.
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From KabTV’s “Systematic Analysis of the Development of the People of Israel” 8/5/19

The Eternal Problem Of Parents And Children

Question: Why are children, as they grow into adults, dissatisfied with us and believe that we are not ideal parents?

Answer: Because we raise them to be egoists.

I was also dissatisfied with my parents, demanded more and more from them, until I became a parent myself and got the same from my children. What can we do?

Until the world will change and get better, it will be like this.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 5/10/20

Team Building Guide, Part 7

Principles of Team Building: Seeing Your Flaws in Others

Question: The sixth rule: everyone judges the friend according to his own flaws. This is a very ancient principle.

At that moment when a person clearly sees the flaws of the other, what can cause him to understand that this is his uncorrected perception?

Answer: Only public opinion. If everyone around him understands that everyone sees in the other his own flaws, his own corruption, he begins to gradually understand that this is really so that he does not see anyone but himself. Thus, he begins to correct himself.

Question: Are there any exercises that will help me realize that this is in me?

Answer: Only if you hear it from others. It all depends on public opinion. You do not see yourself. You always see others, rather, yourself in others.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/18/20

Why Are We Easily Influenced By Society?

Question: All people are conformists by nature. They are more willing to follow society than to show their independence.

Renowned psychologist of the 20th century Erich Fromm writes: “Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking—that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority.”

Why are we so easily influenced by society?

Answer: Because we are entirely a result of the surrounding society. Completely! And what can be one’s own in a person?

Remark: It may be an illusion, but everyone feels like an individual.

Comment: This is given to us by nature. And then what?

Remark: Ask any person and they will say, “I made the decision to go to this country. It was I who decided to acquire such and such a profession,” and so on.

Comment: Of course, he made the decision. And so everyone thinks. But where did this decision come from? What is it a consequence of?

If we dig, we will get to the bottom of the fact that a person has nothing of his own.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

Can We Start With A Clean Slate?

Question: Many people ask if it is possible to change your life in your 30s, 40s, or 50s, to start from scratch? Is it possible to change your family or profession? There are women who really want to change something in their lives, like their profession or marital status, but they are afraid of being judged, afraid that they are violating God’s commandments to accept, to tolerate, and to forgive.

Answer: Let’s put your thoughts and principles in order.

First, it is impossible to change your destiny. You just need to reveal it and try to realize it correctly. This way, you become equal to the Creator, as if you are His partner.

He created you, embedded in you an informational record of all your states up to the most perfect final state, and now you want to grow in the way that lets you, together with Him, realize yourself.

And it turns out that you do become His partner. You begin to understand why this is happening to you, to others, and to the whole world. You begin to attain this whole world in action through yourself.

This is a work of one who is aware of one’s individuality, one’s uniqueness. This is what we strive for. Kabbalah explains this and helps you live this way.

For more on this topic, please read: Women, Relationships & Kabbalah.
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From KabTV’s “Together about Important Things” 7/14/20

Why Are Good People Given A Hard Fate?

Question: Why are good, righteous, pure people given a heavy lot in life, hardships related to coronavirus and all similar events, yet what’s happening in the world does not affect bad people at all?

Answer: Our egoistic world is so distorted that to think that good people should get only good things in it and bad people, bad, is absolutely incorrect.

If good people, who seem to strive for good, sometimes get an evil fate, the blows of fate—this is quite natural. After all, our world is all egoistic and evil. And that is why, there is nothing good to expect from it, especially now, when we are beginning to enter the last stage of our correction, accompanied by a pandemic.

Now there will be such turns that will teach us constantly how to change ourselves correctly in order to be in line with the increasingly manifested integral world.

Question: But can we somehow prepare for this, make some kind of prophylaxis?

Answer: “Prophylaxis” is a good word. I will tell you one thing: We are engaged in this prevention.

The point is that a person must adapt to the future world that is now being born. For this, we must become less egoistic. Therefore, the current virus will shake us and make completely different people. Moreover, by any means, both rough and delicate, depending on how we will succumb to it. This is  first.

Secondly, we need to learn how to unite above our egoism, despite it. It is very difficult.

Everything begins attaining our nature as evil along with the yearning to reach a correct, good relationship between us.

We are entering such a state now when the forces of nature will educate us very seriously.
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From KabTV’s “Together about Important Things” 7/14/20

If A Woman Studies Kabbalah

Question: What if a woman starts studying Kabbalah and develops spiritually, but her husband does not, should she stop studying?

Answer: No, you can’t stop it. If you are given the opportunity to develop yourself, your soul, in no case should you stop. Just do so without reproach to your husband.

Tell him that this is your hobby, which makes you feel very good, and it is better to have spiritual adventures than to look for some adventures on the side. He’ll agree to that.

Question: What if he insists on my stopping the studies?

Answer: Why? If the wife is interested in, say, esotericism, something spiritual, he can even brag about it.

Comment: A man is afraid that a woman will change, outgrow him in development, and leave.

My Response: He may be afraid, but we need to make sure that he prefers it over something else. A man always wants his wife to be nearby, to look at him and serve him. Therefore, we must show him that this is exactly what he achieves.

Comment: But as a woman, I can’t influence a man’s choice. After all, to develop with me and grow spiritually will be his own choice.

My Response: Sure. In the spiritual, it is impossible to force anything. Therefore, it is said that in the spiritual there is no coercion, everyone studies as much as one can, as much as one wants. Maybe he doesn’t want to study Kabbalah, but prefers yoga or something else. So be it.

You need to allow another person to do such things through love. There is nothing wrong with this, he still remains your partner, your spouse.
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From KabTV’s “Together about Important Things” 7/14/20

Communication Through The Creator

Comment: You write: “People are looking for connections incorrectly. The connection between us is possible, but through the Creator.”

My Response: Yes. The Creator is nature around us. Only through this connection with nature, the Creator, can we truly reach the next level of existence, begin to feel eternally alive, connect to the eternal source, and become like It.

We will feel ourselves existing not in this mortal temporary body, but in the soul, that is, in the spirit between us. And all this is possible. I hope we get there pretty quickly.
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From KabTV’s “Today’s International Situation” 6/18/20

New Life 1168 – Fantasy And Supernatural Powers

New Life 1168 – Fantasy And Supernatural Powers
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

When a person adapts to the characteristics of the higher power, one gains supernatural power and control over the movie of one’s life. People yearn to have more control and we develop through related fantasies. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches that there is an ideal state in nature toward which everything is drawn and teaches us how to reach it by learning how to summon supernatural forces and feel a perfect state in nature. The general power in nature is called the Creator, God. Being like God means knowing both the good and the bad forces and how to use them correctly thereby attaining freedom.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1168 – Fantasy And Supernatural Powers,” 10/22/19

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Leadership In The New Era

Question: What will be the leadership in the new period?

Answer: The leadership of the new era belongs to integral humanity, which has realized that it cannot exist in any other form. If we go this way, we will succeed.

During the period of our many thousands of years of evolution, we have come to a state where humanity should be harmoniously connected with the surrounding nature, with the world, with the cosmos. We must stop using only our egoistic forces and egoistic mind. We need to become one whole. Only in this case will we be able to continue our existence.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 5/24/20

“What Is The Spiritual Meaning Of Tisha B’Av?” (Quora)

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the spiritual meaning of Tisha B’Av?“

Our world is governed by two forces, positive and negative, and we humans exist between these forces. In spirituality, the root of the negative force is called “Tisha B’Av” (“the 9th of Av“).

Even as far back as in ancient Babylon, the negative force always reveals around this special date. Whether it be the sin of the spies, the ruin of the First Temple, the exile of Babylon, the ruin of the Second Temple at Tisha B’Av, and the expulsion of Jews from the Land of Israel, or afterward from Spain, Germany and England, the people of Israel execute major sins and also receive punishments on Tisha B’Av.

Why do such sins and punishments take place?

It is all because we fail to bring the positive force in advance of the negative force that reveals at Tisha B’Av.

The First Temple was ruined due to our lack of connection, and the Second Temple was ruined due to unfounded hatred.

In each case, we encounter a shattering due to our growing distance from each other, which unleashes the negative force among our relations.

As Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) writes:

“As the natural death of the individual results from disharmony among one’s organs, the nation’s natural decline results from some obstruction that occurred among its organs, as our sages testified (Tosfot, Baba Metzia, Chapter Two), ‘Jerusalem was ruined only because of unfounded hatred that existed in that generation.’ At that time, the nation was plagued and died, and its organs were scattered to every direction.” (Yehuda Ashlag, “The Nation.”)

On the contrary, our unity has the power to block the negative force from entering into our relations, and in its place, our unity lets the positive force shine through our connections, bringing about peace and harmony.

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“What Do You Think About Reincarnation?” (Quora)

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What do you think about reincarnation?“

There are two ways we can think about reincarnation: in relation to the soul’s development, i.e., the ascent from this world to the spiritual world, and also as the succession of generations in this world.

In terms of the latter, reincarnation is the passing down of genetic, material, perceptual and sensory information from one generation to the next.

For instance, the current generation’s children contain information accumulated by their previous generations. This is why children in each generation can quickly work out how to use the technology and tools of their generation.

Humanity’s development thus unfolds as a succession of generations, where we transfer material progress in science, technology, art and culture, as well as psychological advancements and an inner human message, to each successive generation.

In terms of our ascent from this world to the spiritual world, reincarnation starts from when we feel the awakening of a spiritual desire.

Such a desire is expressed as questions about the meaning and purpose of life.

Kabbalah describes this desire as the seed of our soul, and calls it a “point in the heart.”

Depending on how much we feel such a desire, it urges us to seek through various teachers and environments until we find one that we feel can guide us to attain our spiritual root.

Attaining our spiritual root, according to Kabbalah, is our life’s purpose.

By attaining our spiritual root, we receive clear answers to questions about the meaning and purpose of life—clear because they become expressed in us as sensations of attainment of the spiritual world, where our perception opens up to the complete fulfillment and knowledge that exists above the level of our current world, in our soul.

The journey of developing our spiritual desire and reaching the attainment of our spiritual root is by undergoing a series of spiritual reincarnations, until we reach our final destination from where we emerged.

By doing so, we complete our reincarnation cycle.

Kabbalists explain how such a process can take many lifetimes. Thus, if we discontinue this journey, we will return to it in future lives until we eventually attain the root of our soul.

Until we become granted with a spiritual desire, we accumulate suffering via the formerly-mentioned process of reincarnation at the level of this world.

The more we suffer in our development, the more it leads us to ask existential questions, differentiating our spiritual desire from our other desires, and adding to our yearning to rise above this world and attain our spiritual root.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora | Add Comment / Ask Question →

A Fight We Are All In

Question: In the fight against the coronavirus, it is clear that we have already received a global brain: information and experience diverge across all countries.

How can we reach a global heart? How do we feel others? And what feelings are you talking about? Don’t doctors who save lives by working 16 hours a day do it out of feelings? After all, many people have a choice not to work.

Answer: I don’t think doctors have a choice to work or not. I don’t think they themselves decide to stay at home. In principle, their profession and circumstances do not exclude self-sacrifice.

But the fact is that the time has come to understand that we are connected to each other and each country cannot take care only of itself separately because the virus practically has no borders.

How it is transmitted and how it arises, we still do not know at all. Therefore, absolutely everyone takes part in the fight against it. So far, this is the best achievement that the pandemic has brought us.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

Team Building Guide, Part 6

Team Building Principles: “Buy Yourself a Friend”

Question: Fifth rule: Each member of the group should try to “buy friends.” This is an ancient principle that sages of all generations have written about a lot.

How should one buy a friend? Your attention, concessions, cancellation of personal interests? Or are there some other principles?

Answer: However you can buy him, buy him. Gifts, words, actions. Anything.

Question: That is, it is a tool. And the result? What will it give me?

Answer: You attract him to you. After all, a friend is someone who can support you, agree with you. Even based on purely selfish interests.

Question: Meaning, by my attention I buy him and thereby buy his support?

Answer: Naturally.
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From KabTV’s “Management Skills” 6/18/20

The Age Of Enlightenment And Emancipation, Part 5

The Confrontation Between Two Movements

Question: Some time after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, spiritual movements began to flourish in Safed, and Kabbalistic knowledge among the masses began to spread.

But then the rapid dissemination of the new movement caused a response and resistance. Spiritual teachers of the traditional Lithuanian school began to oppose the spread of this knowledge with boycotts, slander to authorities, and physical extermination.

How does one explain this? Why did the teaching of the Ari, which should have already been embodied in humanity, suddenly fail and the fall began again?

Answer: This is not a failure, but a natural development of the method of correction, which cannot go by only one line. It goes precisely by two lines and is realized between them, in the third one.

As a result, it turned out that the Kabbalah of the Baal Shem Tov is the same Kabbalah of the Ari, which was understood by the masses. He organized a Cheder, that is, a place for classes. He recruited talented young people into his group, completely regardless of their status. And then large groups of students and leaders of Hasidic movements were formed from his students. They were especially popular among the Jewish population of Ukraine, Belarus, and Eastern Europe where their own schools were organized.

But at the same time, another school, which was founded by the Vilna Gaon appeared. He believed that people should be taught gradually, and only those who had achieved great knowledge in the Talmud, in a simple study of the Torah.

In his opinion, studying Kabbalah should be spread not among ordinary people, but among the elite to whom the spiritual worlds and other predestinations of humanity can be explained only after they had seriously mastered the “dry” Torah.

Question: Kabbalah speaks of love for one’s neighbor in its simplest, earthly form. What could be the danger of studying Kabbalah?

Answer: The fact is that when you simply talk about love for your neighbor, by that you let a person think that if he treats others correctly, then nothing else is needed. Therefore, there is some lightheadedness in the understanding of “love for one’s neighbor.”

This is how a movement was formed in Hasidism that if you love another person and seem to treat him correctly, then this is enough. Nothing more is needed, and you are already fulfilling your predestination.

And the Vilna Gaon claimed: “No, it is necessary to seriously study the Torah, the Babylonian Talmud, and carefully keep all the laws. Only after that one can study Kabbalah.”

Therefore, in the introduction to his great work, The Study of the Ten Sefirot, Baal HaSulam pays much attention to this. At the very beginning, he asks the question: “Is it really necessary to fully know all the great laws of fulfilling the Torah in our world and only after that study Kabbalah?

“Or is it enough to do it in parallel? Or even, perhaps, is it not at all necessary to know and obey all the laws so scrupulously? Because the Creator requires us to correct our hearts more than to fill our heads with all kinds of laws.”

So here we are in a state of great ideological contradiction. And it is very serious because it speaks of the method of the soul’s correction. Should it be taught to children from the age of thirteen or even earlier? Or maybe, it can be explained to women as well? Or only to great experts on the Babylonian Talmud?

This ideological contradiction was a necessary process and was brewing by itself.
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From KabTV’s “Systematic Analysis of the Development of the People of Israel” 8/5/19

New Life 1258 – East, West, And The Integral World

New Life 1258 – East, West, And The Integral World
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

The world is divided into East and West according to the root of the soul of every nation. The nation of Israel is a third component, a special one which is neither East nor West; it is unlike any other nation. The West cannot learn from the East as they cannot be compared. In collective societies people are ready and willing to accept and obey laws whereas Western culture is rational. The West does not need to learn from the East or vice versa.

Each party needs to correct itself according to the root of its soul. We need to explain to Western people that, today, nature is obligating us to build an integral connection between different individuals for the sake of a better future for everyone. The fulfillment of the freedom of the individual is expressed by self-fulfillment in my connections with others. This is the formula for a perfect world.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1258 – East, West, And The Integral World,” 7/1/20

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So Everyone Will Open Their Eyes

Question: To what extent and how will I become free from the chains of popular views and the impact of the external society if I study the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: I can tell you from my experience that you totally cease to feel the impact of the external society and that you perceive it as childish babble because you try to implement the upper spiritual principles of nature.

Remark: People will say that it is arrogance.

My Comment: Let them say so; it makes no difference. When I reveal the upper goal of nature and it illuminates for me, different popular views have no effect on me and I am simply above them. If you know that this is the truth, you regret that others are unaware of this truth, but you do not descend to the beastly level of existence because of it.

Question: Aren’t you sorry that a person does not understand the truth?

Answer: I would like to bring the truth to the whole world so that people will see and hear what the wisdom of Kabbalah says and so that everyone will open their eyes, and then once they see the truth about the whole system and how nature is managed, they will decide what to do independently. I would like that very much, but unfortunately an individual can attain it only by his own efforts.

Question: But as a result of his efforts, does a person still come to a free, conscious decision? I mean, doesn’t he simply force himself to choose the path to the truth but seemingly feels it?

Answer: Yes, no one can do it for him. As we say, “Freedom is a conscious necessity.”
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 11/17/19

Train To High Jump Over Egoism

The coronavirus has placed us into virtual reality, sending us home. Gradually, over time, we will get used to working from home, to new virtual relationships with colleagues at work, with banks, government agencies, with friends. We will build virtual circles of communication, closer and more distant, related to work and leisure.

You can play chess online; you can even join in sports together while each stays at home. A computer program gives the impression that we are together and do the same exercises.

However, this raises a question because people go to a fitness club to place themselves under the influence of that environment. If I miss a workout, I will get a reprimand from the coach. And in training, I must try to be no worse than others. How will all this happen in a virtual environment if I am alone at home with a computer program in front of me? I no longer feel the pressure of the physical group, and I will not try as hard.

I become a great egoist, I remain alone with myself in my microcosm, and I no longer have to reckon with anyone or explain anything to anyone. But I think it is good. This is how I begin to realize how selfish I was. In order to connect with the environment, I need to rise a little above my egoism. This is the reason I try to connect with others.

The fact that I am distancing myself from my former connections does not mean that I have become a greater egoist because I am doing it under duress because of the pandemic. I move away, following the instructions of doctors and the Ministry of Health, so as not to transmit the virus to someone and not get infected myself.

But when I was left alone at home, I had the opportunity to think about how I could approach others. The problem is that we are committing a crime in our thoughts. If our thoughts about each other were kind, then we would not be afraid of the coronavirus.

If we went out into public places with the thought of how not to harm others and knew how to protect them, we would never pass the virus from one person to another. Everything is determined by thought, intention.

We are now in virtual communication, each at a distance from the others. So let’s try to feel how much we are allowed to get closer to our neighbor, not because of the coronavirus, but because of another virus, because of my selfishness.

I have the right to use my egoism only to the extent that it does not harm my neighbor. If I can get closer without hurting you, then I will. And if I have selfish thoughts, then I cannot come close. In this form, you can already start measuring the distance between us in order to understand how far or close we really are. Closeness is defined according to my desire to bring you goodness from heart to heart.

How can we ensure that we fulfill our commitments to the group and show up for training on time and do all the necessary exercises together? I agree with my group mates that we are preparing for our virtual meeting so that everyone thinks kindly of the rest. And then everyone must check himself whether he can approach such a meeting.

If we have agreed to meet, then I leave the house and go to my friends. And at some point on the way, I begin to doubt if I can get closer? What if you can’t go on and I will harm them? Maybe I’m thinking about myself instead of thinking about them? This is how I begin to estimate material distance according to spiritual distance.

Then we begin to talk with friends only at spiritual distances, figuring out how close or distant we are to each other, connected or disconnected. And all this is about spiritual convergence or distance. It turns out that the virtual society helps us achieve spiritual connection. If we measure the distance from heart to heart in this way, then this is already a spiritual dimension.

We must establish between us such a measure of reference that will be spiritual, not material, that is, not in meters or kilometers, but in heart units of measurement, from heart to heart. Thus, we develop a special sensitivity between us. Only if I really wish my friend well am I ready to approach him and connect with him. In this case, we will never harm each other, and no virus can spread between us.

In order to achieve this practically, we need to develop a computer program that will let us train our attitude toward others the way we train muscles. It will show me how close or far I am to other people and how I can approach or distance myself from them. It should be obvious to me that I am not moving away materially, but only spiritually.

This is how we will begin to move from the material world to the spiritual world, where everything is measured only by the correspondence of properties, by the proximity of hearts.

The program should guide a person through a series of exercises, starting with the simplest, and becoming more and more complex, letting him understand his attitude to various actions, all kinds of other people’s desires. He will see if he is able to rise above his nature in order to connect more with his neighbor. So we will gradually get closer.

We need computer programs that will train a person, as if in a gym, in different life situations and teach him to rise above them for the benefit of others, and not himself. Through such exercises, he will see whom he cares more about: others or himself.

The program will present a person with various life situations one after another, guiding him through different sensory states and showing how ready he is to rise above his egoism for the good of others and take care of them without thinking about himself, or not ready for this. This will greatly change a person and will form new people out of us. It is possible to create such programs, you just need to show a little imagination.
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From KabTV’s “The Impact of the Environment in the Virtual World” 7/14/20