The Night Of The Exodus From Egypt

Question: How does Kabbalah explain “the night of the exodus from Egypt”?

Answer: The night of the exodus from Egypt is a result of all previous development of Jews whereby they brought themselves to the state that allowed them to become a nation and understand that inside them is theego, Pharaoh, that rips them apart, leads to the conflicts with each other, and makes them feel distant from each other.

Look what is happening around: discords in the family, society, and government. We would do anything in order to suppress an alleged enemy. We need to start feeling our state as Egypt, as the reign of the Pharaoh, meaning our egoism that prevents us from being one nation, one family. Precisely this is called night.

This is why on the Passover night we gather together with our families and consider ourselves as one family, one nation. We want to demonstrate that we are ready to unite, to be together with the aim of rising above our egoism and coming to the freedom from it. This is the exodus from Egypt and the entrance to the land of Israel.

Between them there is a period of 40 years of passing the desert whereby we correct ourselves. By this correction we prepare ourselves for the entrance to the land of Israel as we can’t go straight away from the egoism and hatred to love. After all, love is the same egoism just in a reversed form. And 40 years long periods of preparation represent a distance from the desire to receive to the desire to bestow, from hatred to love.

Egyptian night is a pitch dark, terrible night of an absolute lack of understanding of what is happening and what will happen. People see that because of the mutual hatred, they cease to exist as a nation, as a family. They understand that this dead-end state leads them to death.

But at the same time they don’t see the way out of it because the power of egoism seems to be historically eternal and absolute. In everything the person turns to he sees his egoism, and he feels that he does everything only for his own benefit. It controls our every action: internal, external, our relationships, etc.

Everyone keeps such a distance from another where he would be able to defend himself and to receive maximum from the other. It means that the egoism all the time regulates our relationships with each other, nature, animals, the world, and life.

The terrible state of communication only in an egoistic manner is revealed to us as the darkness of Egypt. Exactly in this state, in the middle of the night a force suddenly appears in us, which leads us forward to the exit from the egoism and gives us a feeling that we can rise from it.

A culminating point of inversion appears and the most terrible darkness suddenly starts transforming into some hope, light: An exit exists somewhere, I have to run! And I run after this dream, after this internal power that suddenly erupts in me. And the light appears!

It is a special night, the night of exiting the egoistic slavery to altruistic eternity and perfection. This is why we celebrate it.
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From a TV Program “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/13/2016

Responsibility For What Is Happening

The Torah, The Book of Numbers, 33:55, 33:56: But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come about that those whom you let remain of them will become as pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land in which you live. And as I plan to do to them, so I will do to you.

We need to alienate from ourselves our own desires, meaning to correct them within ourselves. The desires do not disappear anywhere; it’s impossible to cut them off and to throw them away. There exists an enormous desire created by the Creator, as it is said: “I created the evil desire (evil inclination) and gave the Torah for its correction.”

The intentions for this desire can be either egoistic or altruistic. The desire itself is inert. In its original application it is an absolute zero, but it is given to us in a negative form. Therefore, we need to correct its negative application into a positive one, which can be achieved by changing the intention. This is called driving out the nations that exist within your desire.

Those whom you let remain of them [will become] pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, [that is, these desires won’t let us perform any spiritual actions of bestowal, love, and mutual connection] and they will trouble you in the land in which you live. This reminds very much of our current state. After all, we do not work on ourselves!

Today the so-called nation of Israel are those who were given the opportunity to reach spiritual correction. However, we don’t do anything! Therefore we constantly receive pricks and punches, knives onto our backs and necks—what our neighbors do to us. And that’s because we don’t do our job! There is no need to blame them, only ourselves! We need to find the correct formula in order to change the state that passes only through us.

If we do not follow what Kabbalah says, we will suffer, we won’t achieve anything. We need to do something about ourselves.

We find ourselves at the epicenter of the “potential atomic explosion,” and we don’t understand what we evoke upon the entire world through ourselves. We have to acknowledge our responsibility for what is happening.

Comment: But doesn’t this concealment come from the upper degree?

Answer: Concealment is given specifically so that we can correct ourselves quickly, in connection with others, to feel the upper state and bring it upon the rest of the humanity.

This concealment is for our own benefit. If it didn’t exist, we would function automatically, following the instructions from above mindlessly, with no feeling or reason, as if we were a wound up mechanism. In that case we would be called angels. But man needs to be higher. He needs to rise to the level when he himself chooses to be similar to the Creator and brings His idea into the world.
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From a TV Program “The Secrets of the Eternal Book”

New Life #717 – The Exodus From Egypt Within Me

New Life #717 – The Exodus From Egypt Within Me
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Summary

Reality is a whole; therefore, it is difficult to talk about part of it without knowing the entire picture. The burning bush in the wilderness represents the internal revelation of Moses after burning his ego and matching his characteristics to Divinity, like to a similar absorption frequency; he and the Creator broadcast on the same wavelength.

Fundamentally good is not inherent in us; the evil inclination is, so we can not consider anyone but ourselves. After the forty years Moses lived with Pharaoh, he came to Jethro for forty years and learned about the quality of bestowal, Hesed (Mercy), and how to attain it above the egoism that is exposed. Then, he can return to Egypt to work on the ego.

The goal of humanity is for all of human nature, including all egoism, to resemble the wholeness of the upper force whose nature is love.

The return to Egypt symbolizes the return to the ego of Moses that still needs correction. None of us recognize the Pharaoh within ourselves. Pharaoh symbolizes the absolute dominance of the general ego in us. Moses symbolizes the small desire for the characteristic of bestowal, the discovery of truth.

The people of Israel represent the desires that can be corrected to the attribute of bestowal and love within the general ego. The ego is the entire field of reality, and Moses needs signs and wonders to show the ego that he has power. So, Moses takes the rod, whose function is to aim him in the spiritual way, to put the ego below, and go above it.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #717 – The Exodus From Egypt Within Me,” 4/19/16

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Egoism And The Plagues Of Egypt

Question: How does the ego feel the plagues of Egypt?

Answer: The Egyptian plagues are felt once the ego is built in the form of Egypt and Pharaoh,which is opposite from the nation of Israel and Moses, is created in a person. These blows are needed to tear us away from the ego and to prepare us to break away from it.

Question: I don’t understand how we can ascend above the ego and love it at the same time. We are used to suppressing our ego, to eradicating it in every possible way, so what does it mean to ascend above it?

Answer: It means that you should focus your desires on filling others and receiving pleasure from that.

Question: How can I understand that the ego is evil if the groups don’t talk about it and try to blur it by playing games of love?

Answer: We should talk about it!
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Organs Have Minds Of Their Own

In the News (sciencedaily.com): “Scientists have discovered how parts of organs grow differently when body size changes.

“…The study entitled, ‘Differential scaling within an insect compound eye,’ reveals how different parts of a single organ in the body can change sizes at different rates. …

“Dr Jeremy Niven, of the University of Sussex said: ‘Scientists have been trying to understand how organs reach the right size in our bodies since the beginning of the last century.

“’Scaling within organs still remains poorly understood — but our results show for the first time that when the size of our bodies change, the different regions and cells within our organs respond in more diverse ways than previously thought.’”

My Comment: According to Kabbalah, every cell in our body has its own mind. The smallest part of the body contains a microcosm. The part and the whole are equal. This is based on the absolutely closed integral connection of all the parts of the universe into one perfect whole. All discoveries are discoveries of the reality with regard to us.
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IQ And The Level Of Happiness

Research (The Washington Post): “Hell might actually be other people — at least if you’re really smart.

“That’s the implication of fascinating new research published last month in the British Journal of Psychology. Evolutionary psychologists Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Norman Li of Singapore Management University dig in to the question of what makes a life well-lived. While traditionally the domain of priests, philosophers and novelists, in recent years survey researchers, economists, biologists and scientists have been tackling that question. …

“They use what they call ‘the savanna theory of happiness’ to explain two main findings from an analysis of a large national survey (15,000 respondents) of adults aged 18 to 28.

“First, they find that people who live in more densely populated areas tend to report less satisfaction with their life overall. ‘The higher the population density of the immediate environment, the less happy’ the survey respondents said they were. Second, they find that the more social interactions with close friends a person has, the greater their self-reported happiness.

“But there was one big exception. For more intelligent people, these correlations were diminished or even reversed.

“’The effect of population density on life satisfaction was therefore more than twice as large for low-IQ individuals than for high-IQ individuals,’ they found. And ‘more intelligent individuals were actually less satisfied with life if they socialized with their friends more frequently.’

“Let me repeat that last one: When smart people spend more time with their friends, it makes them less happy.”

Question: How is it possible to unite people who have a high IQ?

Answer: People with a high IQ cannot be combined because they are united only in their respective fields and only in their narrow interests.

But a common platform can appear among different people with different levels of IQ, through the knowledge of the possibility of establishing a new level of perception, with the union of a higher purpose—and the rise to the next level of perception of natureand life.
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New Life #716 – The Children Of Israel In Egypt, Part 2

New Life #716 – The Children Of Israel In Egypt, Part 2
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

After being raised in the house of Pharaoh, Moses, who represents the force of love, goes out and sees terrible things. The children of Israel and the Egyptians represent different approaches to life, pure egoism in contrast to connection and love.

Today people find like distasteful, and if we don’t advance on our own, the force of nature that manages the world might embitter our lives. Today, just as in the past, we must break away from the current method of life and move on to a new method. This is the reason that Moses married Tzipora, Jethro’s daughter, since she represents an additional desire, a desire that is made of receiving and giving. Moses receives an additional desire in order to advance because Moses is a weak force that is not enough to face the big ego, but the Creator is with him.

This is the preparation Moses needs in order to deal with the Egyptians, with Pharaoh, with the children of Israel, and with the Creator. This is how the Creator prepares the children of Israel for redemption.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #716 – The Children Of Israel In Egypt, Part 2,” 4/14/16

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New Life #715 – The Children Of Israel In Egypt, Part 1

New Life #715 – The Children Of Israel In Egypt, Part 1
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

How does Egypt represent a person’s ego? How do the figures in the story about the exodus from Egypt illustrate forces that operate in a person, and what is the analogy between the slavery in Egypt and the crisis the world is undergoing today?

Summary

The story of the exodus from Egypt in its literary sense is well known all over the world, why is unclear. However, if we wish to penetrate the inner meaning of this story and understand the forces that build the figures in it, we must get away from the simple description of the characters in the story. Our world is managed in the same way that different forces create the display on a computer screen. Reality is made of two forces: the force of bestowal and the force of receiving, the Creator and the created being.

The Creator’s hand turns the images from inside, and it also motivates Batya to pull Moses out of the Nile. Moses symbolizes a special force that should correct all of the other desires that are in the attribute of receiving and take them out of Egypt, which symbolizes the ego. Moses was raised as a prince in Pharaoh’s home, egoistic system of healthy capitalism where everyone cares only about himself and everything revolves around money.

Money (Kesef) represents the ability to cover (Kisuf) (same root in Hebrew), the ability to pay for the fulfillment of my desire, while Egypt symbolizes the same dream that we have in our world today. Today, we can no longer manage our world in this way because it is against the Creator, the quality of love and bestowal, and so we must advance to a system in which everyone examines what he can give to others and not receive.

When the children of Israel fled from Egypt, it was because they did not want to live according to their lust for money, according to the desire to receive, and felt that it meant death for them. The alternative is to live in love, not in pride, and this is what Moses represents.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #715 – The Children Of Israel In Egypt, Part 1,” 4/14/16

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