Another Tower Of Babel

Opinion (Andrei Miroshnichenko): “The real shock to civilization will be the introduction of a browser with the ability to translate from one language to another seamlessly, without effort on your part. Imagine you open a Chinese website and you understand everything on it. Or’re far away in Suriname also understands all instantly without any problems.

“This multilingual browser would be a disaster for this civilizational unit. …

“And we get another Tower of Babel. …

“If the printing press, according to McLuhan, established a national state, the multilingual browser, on the contrary, destroys the very principle of the national state, which built the modern world order.

“Strictly speaking, this browser is the full realization of the idea of ​​the Internet. …

“In Western Europe, each wave of the media was accompanied by a certain adjustment period. For example, the first newspaper, in fact intended for the elites, emerged in the early XVII century. In the middle of the XIX century were invented the printing press and cheaper steam driven paper making, reducing the cost of production of the press, there were mass newspapers – the penny press, and there contemporary journalism emerged. That is, the distribution of newspapers from the elite to the masses took just about two centuries and formed a political system that came in the form of the general qualifying the same general reader for voting.

“In the first third of the XX century there was already a radio, even for the mass media, which did not require literacy. It played a crucial role in the formation of fascist, communist and commercial empires, that is, in the formation of modern advertising and promotion. Then came television and the Internet. Each wave of media has created new social relations. …

“… these processes are related to the ‘colorful revolutions,’ religious extremism, international tensions, all this is the ‘new Middle Ages’ – a reaction to the too rapid evolution of the media in recent years. Traditionalist consciousness, which is still at the stage of information broadcast from the ‘top-down’ is in conflict with the open architecture of the network, with its freed authorship.

“… the Gutenberg printing press led to religious wars, revolutionary and reactionary terror, redrew the map of Europe, the continent settled by three types of refugees: political, economic and religious.

“I believe that we are waiting for disasters, comparable in scale.

“More curious is how widespread computerization and speeding the flow of information is combined with counter-tendencies. …

“Imagine from two-dimensional space, we jumped to twelve. Of course, this is a shock. Inevitably, there are reverse reactions.

“The fact that changes are taking place in the media are not limited to changes in personal or social habits. …

“In the transition from book to media, restructuring occurs physiological brain.

“Reading involves language centers, and Internet surfing is a task. …the ability to skillfully use the information on the Internet is developing at the expense of the ability to read length. Internet surfing, incidentally, is very useful for the elderly. After all, the brain has to deal with many small unnoticed tasks: to click – not to click on a particular link. They say this almost invisible training helps Parkinson’s disease . But the brain of a young person in the transition to society from an online book loses the ability to concentrate.

“In fact, long-term focus on an abstract subject initially was not peculiar to man, and in the wild, even dangerous.. . Prior to the book, only priests and hunters were able to concentrate for a long time on one object.

“Thanks to Gutenberg, the ability to focus on abstract thoughts physiologically altered the brain of millions of people, which led to the explosive development of science, the discovery of vaccines, flight into space.

“Today multimedia effects on the brain leads us to the next round of the spiral. The older generation may still have some immunity, some reflection on the transition from the book to online. But the biggest problem here – the education of children. They have no experience of socialization offline, they think the Internet – is something that has always been. And they did not have experience of reading anything of length.

“There is a rhetorical question. For example, Nicholas Carr’s famous question about the Internet, does it make us dumber or smarter, I answer – ‘yes.’

“Immediately after it are seen new horizons – dimensional media, immersive media, induced reality, implantation device, finally connecting to the network of nerve endings.”

My Comment: Everything is evolving only to realize the program of nature, the unification of all of humanity into the image and system of an Adam (Man), a single man. The introduction of all kinds of media will need to complete the unification of everyone into a single organism, into one heart, desire, and mind. This will no longer expressed through technological attainments, but through voluntary ascent above ouregoism according to the method of the wisdom of Kabbalah.[167142]

Humanity Does Not Become More Sensible Over Time

In the News (scitation.aip.or): “Mathematicians from Cornell University developed a model that shows which type of thinking, intuitive or rational, typified humanity in different phases of its evolution.

“According to the study, there were times in human history when people who had a slow and rational thinking style ruled, and there were times when rulers were typified by quick and intuitive thinking. According to this mathematical model, it seems that people are not becoming more rational with time, but that rational thinking actually develops cyclically and can be compared to the four phases of economic activity (recession, depression, upsurge, prosperity). The domination of rationality depends on the amount of resources accessible to humanity.”

My Comment: Everything develops according to the four phases of direct Light, according to the four letters of the Creator’s name, “HaVaYaH,” the general and individual schema of the whole creation, of the whole world and every part in it. TheUpper Light has to go through the desire (phase zero), the four phases of its spreading (phase one) in order to prepare it and make it available to feel itself and to want to be like the Light itself (phase 2) ,and then to fulfill its desire (phases 3 and 4). Phases 1-4 develop under the influence of the Upper Light.
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How Can We Prevent Another Holocaust?

I am a son of Holocaust survivors who were among the few of the Laitman family who survived the Holocaust. Two thirds of my relatives were slaughtered in the death camps. I was born in 1946 and was raised under the dark shadow that the war left on my family and on the Jewish population in all of Eastern Europe.

For me the Holocaust isn’t some distant memory, but a painful reminder of what might happen to us. It is this thought that brings up the constant troubling question in me: How can we prevent another Holocaust?

I feel an ocean of hatred closing in on us. The external signs have never been clearer and international reports indicate an upsurge in anti-Semitism. On International HolocaustRemembrance Day, a question was brought up on the BBC as to whether the time has come to cease talking about the Holocaust, and about a month ago, there was supposed to be a scientific convention in England about the legitimacy of the State of Israel. If this is not enough, an agreement regarding the use of nuclear weapon has recently been signed with Iran, which is more evidence as to why we must not rely on our allies.

It is hard to ignore the clear warning signals as to what is expected. So how can we prevent another Holocaust? In addition to lamenting about the past, we must make room for close scrutiny, examination, and the correction of our current state. We live in a closed system of forces that operate according to the law of connection. When we are compatible with that law, we feel good, and when we are divided and separated, this system, like any other system in nature, forces us to balance ourselves. Sometimes correcting this direction can involve great suffering.

I am aware of how difficult it may be for Holocaust survivors and their families to read what I say, but still the truth must be said. The Holocaust took place because the Israeli nation didn’t keep the law of connection. Why us? Because we have a special responsibility to keep this law. We have a role that was given to us back in the days of Abraham. When egoism tore the people of ancient Babylon apart, our forefather discovered the law that governs our reality, which is the law of connection. The few that learned the method of connection from him became the nation of Israel.

Keeping the law of connection is our life’s goal, and passing on the method of connection and unity is the only justification for our existence as a nation. At the beginning of the 20^th century we received an opportunity to return to the land of Israel, not in order to build a home for the Jewish people, but in order to connect within it. The Jews didn’t take this opportunity and preferred to isolate themselves in their communities in Europe or to integrate within general society. The reaction of the upper system to these actions was the Holocaust. A moment before the world drowned in blood, Kabbalists still cried out that we had to return to our land and unite, but the Jews didn’t listen. Instead of willingly moving closer, the terrible afflictions of the Holocaust brought us closer to one another, and it was as a result of the Holocaust that we received a country.

With all due respect to the United Nations, the real mandate for the existence of this country is our role. The county we received, as Kabbalists say, is only an opportunity to keep the law of connection, which is exactly what the world demands of us. Subconsciously, the world wants us to unite and to also pass Abraham’s method on to them. But we refuse to connect, and this is the source of the hatred they feel towards us.

Holocaust Remembrance Day and Independence Day have to become days in which we all engage in our role as a nation, and they must also be days of reexamining the essence of our existence. During these days, we have to gather in tens of thousands of roundtables throughout the country and talk about the only way of being truly independent—independent of our ego and connected to one another through love of others. This is the only way we can secure our future and our children’s future.

Spiritual And Physical Exile

From ancient Babylon to the destruction of the Temple, the group of Abraham went through many various states, ascents and descents. It is due to egoism that they were forced to unite with each other to the extent that they revealed the inner anti-egoistic laws of nature that they wrote in the book called the Torah. The Torah is the guide by which we must live today.

Through cultivating good relationships with each other, consideration, mutual trust, and support, they revealed a special force of connection within this unity, which is the force of nature. This force holds within itself the entire universe and causes its movement towards harmony.

This was the major discovery of the descendants of the group of Abraham. Having understood the fundamental force of nature that causes the development of humankind, they saw the process by which it develops.

Over time, coming out of slavery in Egypt, they again returned to their country called Israel, the land of those who seek the Creator, where they built a state based on love of others and laws of mutual trust.

These laws were introduced into everyday life through the Sanhedrin, which was a council of sages who had achieved a high level of altruism that clearly told them how to move forward and what to do. Thus, the sages dealt with the people’s problems and led it forward. The people existed in this state before the time called the destruction of the Temple.

For many hundreds of years and with each generation fighting with their ego and rising above it, they came to a state when an unexpected surge of egoism occurred within them and which they could not cover by getting closer to each other. Through this egoism, the society fell apart.

It was then that internecine wars, distrust, and disagreement began, leading to the invasions by the Greeks and then the Romans. Thus the path of the state of Israel ended. The entire group of people went from its spiritual state into exile, from a state of “love thy neighbor as thyself” to a descent to normal, everyday egoism.

In their physical life, the spiritual exile was manifested in the form of physical exile. The Romans who conquered the land of Israel expelled the Jews who were forced to begin their centuries of wandering.

Holding together purely egoistically in order not to perish and to somehow survive, they were compelled to move from country to country where they were given temporary shelter. Thus, the 2,000 years of exile of the Jewish people passed in this way.
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/24/14

Reaching Heaven

At the time the people of Israel left Babylon, there were two tendencies. Since then these two tendencies, two worlds, have existed one within the other. The Jewish people were mixed with humanity, and at the same time, they did not dissolve into it. They were scattered, yet they couldn’t disappear; for at their source, they are a completely different society that is connected and linked with each other in another way.

These two tendencies cannot intermingle. The Jewish people and the other peoples have such different natural, spiritual sources that a very clear and tangible separation has existed and still exists between them. This is impossible to describe and understand.

There was a time that Babylon, the cradle of humanity, was like a family. Then a great eruption of ego occurred and King Nimrod came into power. Babylon, in a fundamental way, became the capital for all the advancement of those times: mysticism, the occult, and so on.

Babylon was really at the center of humanity. And in this center a small point was created. This was a Babylonian priest by the name of Abraham, his father Terah, and his grandfather Nahor. They were great masters of wisdom, were learned men, astrologers, and scientists. They were a very educated family for those times.

And so suddenly in Babylon problems and differences of opinion suddenly broke out. The eruption of ego separated people and caused fights, conflicts, struggles between brothers, and other problems that hadn’t existed in the past. A need was discovered for courts, lawyers, guards, police, etc.. In fact, capitalist principles suddenly began to materialize.

The family of Abraham actively participated in this because it was essentially involved in ideological work with the population.

And so the Babylonians reached a situation where they decided to build the Tower of Babel, meaning that allegorically, it reached the heavens. Their arrogance grew in such dimensions that their power, I would say, their audacity and boldness exploded so much that they wanted to reach the stars.

Abraham began to investigate the subject because this subject touched him directly. I think that he began his investigation for absolutely egoistic reasons. After all, if people wanted to reach the stars, this threatened his profession, wealth, power, and authority.

Question: So in the beginning Abraham decided to go in a simple scientific path?

Answer: He had to solve this problem. People first turned to him for advice regarding simple daily problems: Should they water the fields or not, should they go fishing or wait, whom should they marry? They asked things like that. But people became so egoistic, so immersed in narcissism, and so sure of themselves, that it was as if they stopped feeling a need for him.

Abraham felt that they avoided him, and this situation threatened his future.

Understandably, I am exaggerating a bit, but in principle, it must be noted that in the beginning he was a regular egoist. He made statues of idols and sold them profititably to the community that worshipped them. In the end, everyone profited from this, since the community received a feeling of security and Abraham received his profit.

And suddenly people stopped being satisfied with statues. They felt that they were above them. This was threatening to Abraham himself, his future, his profession, and his status. And so he began to investigate what happened.

It is necessary to say that in his heart, he was a true investigator. In other words, the truth was more important to him than his personal gain.

And so when he explored the nature of the phenomenon that he had encountered in the Babylonian environment, Abraham saw a very interesting tendency in the development of the ego. During this process, people began to neglect his idols, for their ego became like a god for them. And accordingly, the fulfillment, the desire, and the glorification of the ego replaced all the other cults.

In the modern era, we see the same processes throughout the world. Why do people move away from religion? It is because the ego has grown in them. “What do I have with a divinity that is sitting who knows where if I have my own divinity: my ego, my self, that is more important to me than anything else?”

Until now, Jews and Christians have broken away from their religion in droves, and in the Muslim world, a struggle against fundamentalism is happening since they are also going through a process away that takes them from religion. As for the Indians, they also have the same struggle, but quietly and covertly. Their way is slightly different, but it is also leading towards the same goal.

There is nothing to do about it, since this is the universal way of development. Yet since every nation has a different purpose, it comes to be expressed in different ways.

In any case, the ego has become a new religion. This is just as it was in ancient Egypt when Pharaoh said: “Who is the Creator that I should listen to His voice? I myself am supreme.”

That is also what happened in ancient Babylon. When Abraham investigated this phenomenon, he discovered its essence: The ego grew to such dimensions that it became the central active image, the supreme power. Highest in the hierarchy of personal worship—for me there is nothing higher than my ego.

And so Abraham wondered: How in general is it possible to contend with this ego? “Suppose that he truly is the crown of creation, the supreme power of nature. In fact, from what I see, the impression is created that the human ego dominates everything. It destroys and builds; everything good and everything bad is done only by it, with its help, and for its sake. But if we go after it blindly, we will destroy everything and annihilate each other and all of civilization.”

This is what Abraham saw. And he was helped by King Nimrod who offered his own solution: separate and distanced from each other, to calm things down, and  scatter all over the shared space.

Nimrod was very clever. He understood that he could not do anything against what was happening by himself. So he worked for the sake of the separation process.

But Abraham looked forward: “Okay, we are dispersing. And what will happen then? After all, this is only half of the work. We truly must calm the Babylonians down who formerly lived as one family and became hateful to each other. But this only delays finding the solution, and from this aspect it doesn’t bring us closer to it at all.

“The true egoistic direction demands that, on the contrary, we cooperate and consolidate. It is true that the ego separates and incites us against one another where different interests conflict. But on the other hand, it connects us so that we can enjoy each other.”

So egoistic development is both, and within it exist opposite aspects. So everyone felt this, yet didn’t know how to use it.

“I know that I cannot get along without my neighbor. Yes, I need to stay away somewhat, to be distant from him where we disturb each other. I suppose that there is a river flowing between us now, or there is a staircase found between us. But on the other hand the neighbor produces something and I produce something, so we can help each other and, in spite of it all, we need to be connected for the sake of our egoistic fulfillment.”

Here the problem of how we correctly cooperate with each other is immediately revealed. The clearest example is the Europeans with their common market. When they were separate, they existed in a reasonable manner. Clearly, they were fighting all the time, but they existed. They wanted to connect and didn’t know how to do this. In other words, it was bad on one side and bad on the other and they didn’t know how to work with the ego.

But in fact, it is impossible to work with it. This problem was clear from the start. Both Abraham and Nimrod stood before the problem of how to transform the ego into a vital force.  How do I use my hatred towards others, my dependence on others, my desire to dominate others in a positive way? And accordingly, the same attitude exists from others towards me, which is the desire to dominate, hate, conquer, and so on. How does one bring all of this to common denominator?

After all, if we don’t solve the problem, we will be constantly immersed in disputes, annihilation, wars, etc. This is what we have seen up to today. People are already tired of all this.

Look at the modern world. From the start, there has always been unrest everywhere. Soon there won’t be any place that is calm. Latin America, China, and Japan will rise up again; everywhere there are the first signs of future wars.

How can we package our ego correctly? If this is a natural force, how can we use it correctly?

The correct use of the ego was Abraham’s discovery. Not one-sided, according to the principle of separation, nor according to the military principle of who will defeat whom, which leads to self-destruction, but a clear calculation: We require the ego so that from the hatred that typifies it, we will create the characteristics of love and mutual connection.

In conclusion, Abraham solved the problem of how to transform the ego. Without getting into philosophical, historical, technical, and psychological details that are inherent in the characteristics of nature and its laws, in general, this is Abraham’s legacy.

As a result of many years of investigation, Abraham succeeded in understanding this natural phenomenon, and after penetrating more and more deeply into the ego, there he found the higher power of nature.

He understood why it was necessary for humanity to pass specifically through this development so that a person will truly rise to the level of the Creator. And then it follows that the aspiration of civilization to build the Tower of Babel to the heavens was right, but it is necessary to build it specifically according to a supra-egoistic technology. The human ego, the construction material of the Tower of Babel, will constantly grow, but each one must stand above it. The little man stands above the pile, above the mountain that is constantly growing.

Abraham researched all the components that appeared, against their will, in that small humanity of Babylon. He used them according to their designation, and he discovered that in fact there is only one solution. And he realized this solution.

He realized it by gathering a group of his supporters, his students, that truly rose up to the heavens, meaning that they built a spiritual Tower of Babel above their ego. And as a result of this, they reached the highest point of nature, the characteristic of bestowal and love. They grew to this level.

In other words, Malchut, the egoistic foundation of humanity, reached the level of complete bestowal and love, the level of Bina.

To reach this, Abraham’s group had to leave Babylon and work for many years. Abraham lived around the year 1,700 BC, and built the correct Tower of Babel, in other words the First Temple attributed to the year 900 BC.

Generally, the concept of the Tower of Babel has passed through all of human history and humanity aspires to it subconsciously. Abraham, in the end, built it, and clearly in an absolutely different form than the Babylonians themselves imagined.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today” 9/24/14

"Nourished" By The Teaching Of Baal HaSulam And Rabash

Question: What did Baal HaSulam add to the soul’s correction that the ARI began?

Answer: The ARI did not write anything himself. His student Marchu (Chaim Vital) wrote everything and the records were published over the course of three generations after the ARI’s death.

Baal HaSulam explained and systematized all of the Ari’s teaching. Before him, the teaching of the ARI was not arranged in an orderly fashion, and therefore it was impossible to study. That is why many people who began to study the ARI’s teaching gave it up and instead studied the works of the Ramak.

I also studied the Ramak until I discovered Baal HaSulam, and I encountered many Kabbalists who studied the Ramak instead of the ARI because everything is clear and orderly in the Ramak’s books. On the other hand, the ARI’s works were not orderly. Baal HaSulam systematized, detailed, and explained them, and gave them shape: three lines, the First and Second Restriction, the Creator and the creation, the definition of the worlds,Sefirot, Partzufim, NRNHY, KHB, ZON, he created a compilation of graphs of the Upper Worlds – The Book of HaElan.

Even though certain parts are missing which he could have put in order as well (such asAdam HaRishon and the impure worlds of BYA), apparently he did not want to work on this. Without Baal HaSulam, we would not have the teaching of the ARI and it would be impossible to understand the ARI.

When you read other Kabbalists now, you understand them because you are familiar with the works of Baal HaSulam. Without him, you would get confused. No matter what texts you look at, whether books on Hassidut, the Ramak, Agra, or others, you will only be able to understand them because you studied Baal HaSulam.

In addition, without the Rabash’s articles we would not be able to understand what is required of us and what the work of the Creator is. Without these two Kabbalists, Baal HaSulam and Rabash, who supplement one another, we would not have the right approach to the method of correction.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/8/10, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

First: The Recognition Of Need

Humanity cannot reach the future before it destroys the old.

Much of the old has destroyed itself—family, culture, etc.—but what is advantageous for the controlling elite does not go away by itself; it remains, although it pulls back by all means.

If the elite recognize the need for transition, then the idea of the transition to the future is formed.

In the past, as a rule, transitions were accomplished by revolutions and social struggle.

This is due to lack of understanding the new state, the absence of vision, the causes and the forces to move towards it.

To make a transition, we need to know where we are going; we need to have a historical view that is consistent with the laws of social development, humans, and our thinking.

No historical and logical view is necessary for destruction; the mind is not required; on the contrary, one needs to be ignorant and blind, with no image of the future.

If there is no social consciousness, if everyone thinks in his own way, we are destroying, not creating, the future.

If we recognize that we need a new worldview to which we must come, our future state and how to develop to reach it, we are aware of the need for new knowledge.

Each new socio-economic historical stage in the development of humanity was based on the previous one, on the “fathers” because all the stages were different degrees of growing egoistic development.

Our state is special; it is the next stage of our development: integral humanity. Since we do not know this state at all, we are given the science of the next stage of our development. After all, we rise from the level of unconscious development (still, vegetative, animate social development) to the development of the “human” level. We were given the science of Kabbalah: how to move to the next stage. Contrary to previous transitions, this transition should be not automatic and instinctive, but conscious. We can achieve it only to the extent of our awareness, understanding, mastery, and control.
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