Ynet: “How To Enjoy The Best Of Both Worlds?”

From my column in Ynet: “How to Enjoy the Best of Both Worlds?”

It seems that precisely now, when we have everything and in abundance, crises just continue to grow. This is the way of the environment telling us, “Guys, the time has come to grow up!”  Rav Michael Laitman explains how must we deal with the global laws of nature and act according to them in daily life.

There was a great king who had a son in old age, and he was very fond of him. Hence, since the day he was born, he thought of only good things for him. He collected the finest, wisest, and most precious books in the kingdom and built him a school. He sent after the finest builders and built palaces of pleasure. He gathered all the musicians and singers and built him concert halls, and called the finest bakers and chefs to provide him with all the delicacies in the world.

But alas, the son grew up to be a fool, with no desire for education. And he was blind and could not see or feel the beauty of the buildings. And he was deaf, unable to hear the poems and the music. And he was ill, permitted to eat only coarse flour bread. (from The Writings of Baal HaSulam – “The Essence of Religion and its Purpose”).

Human society in the early 21^st century did not know better conditions since the development of mankind on Earth. Like the son of the king, we have everything that we need to live well, peacefully, and confidently: abundant food, advanced medicine, developed industry, farming, international trade, a transportation network throughout the world, an available Internet, and what not! And despite all the immense benefits and all the improvements placed in our possession, we still continue to absorb blows and endure crises one after another. When will there be an end to suffering? When we grow up….

A New Life Is Coming To Light

When a new baby is born, he is entirely enveloped in warmth and love. His parents take care of him faithfully and conscientiously and provide everything required for his proper development: a roof over his head, food, clothing, and toys. Even as the infant grows, they don’t stop being concerned about him for a moment, and they watch over him until he is able to survive on his own. They continue to take care of him, play with him and support him until his emotions mature and the right connections in his brain are created that help him react correctly to the reality that surrounds him.

Adolescence, the transition between childhood and youth, is a problematic period. The youth tries to imitate the adults around him and does everything to be like them in his external behavior, while still maintaining the same “small child” inside of him that tries to shake off being invested and taking responsibility, he will demand that they continue to take care of him and pamper him as much as possible. But life is stronger and more rigid—living requires work, raising a family requires being a provider, bringing children into the world requires the development of devotion. One can choose to continue to enjoy games and exciting experiences, but as most of us have experienced in our own flesh, the environment will push us strongly enough to motivate us to get up from the comfortable lair, take responsibility, and be concerned about our own needs.

The Age of Maturity of Humanity

Humanity today is developing like an adolescent. For thousands of years nature adjusted itself to us and prepared a comfortable environment for our development. Now the task is completed. The world has become global and interdependence between us has reached a summit. We have grown up,; the time has come to change. From day to day the connection between us continues to become tighter, obligating us to learn the rules of the new, global, connected world. Now we need to be independent, to adapt ourselves to the nature that surrounds us, and to begin integrating into the true system of life. This is precisely the present point in time in which humanity is found – “adolescence.”

Like an adolescent who wants to feel grown up and simultaneously remain a child, while the environment compels him to mature and goads him to take action, so humanity has also received everything and now endures one crisis after another. This is the way of the environment, signaling to us that the time has come to grow up….”Nature, like a skillful judge, punishes us according to our development,” writes Rav Yehudah Ashlag, Baal HaSulam, in the article, “The Peace.” “For we can see that to the extent that humankind develops, the pains and torments surrounding our sustenance and existence also multiply.”

The breakdown of social connections in all areas of life and the artificial attempts to maintain the connections between one person and another, between husband and wife, between parents and children, between employee and employer, and so on, fail time after time. And this is precisely the reason that specifically in our day the wisdom of Kabbalah has been revealed. It is the method that teaches the global laws of nature and how we must behave according to them in everyday life. Only its power can help us create a beautiful, good, and safe environment here.

If we build connections between us fit for life in today’s connected world, we will gain an understanding and a feeling that will help us make the right decisions, and we will succeed in all our ways. When we build relationships between us based on concern for others and mutual responsibility, all troubles and annoyances will cease and we will gain all the treasures that nature has intended for us, like that prince in the famous parable.

Rav Dr. Michael Laitman is the head of the world “Kabbalah for the People” movement and provides daily lessons in Kabbalah that are broadcast on [Israeli] Channel 66 and on the Internet. The movement invites everyone to come and learn the wisdom of connection based upon the general fundamental rule of our people, “And you shall love your friend as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).
[191310]From Ynet article 8/4/16

Where Does The Soul Go After Death?

Question: Where does s person’s soul go after death?

Answer: After death, the soul doesn’t go anywhere because it is not found in a person!

Question: But, people often say, “the soul hurts.”

Answer: In general, what they mean is that sorrow and longing are gnawing at a person.

If what you mean are the physiological and psychological states in a person, they truly do accompany our body, and when the body dies, they disappear. But basically, this is talking about the transition from one type of matter to another type of matter according to the law of the conservation of energy, entropy. So, there is nothing to worry about. Nothing disappears anywhere. It simply passes from one form to another.

That is also how it is with a person. If a particular internal change in form occurs in a person while he exists in this world, then he will begin to feel himself as existing in another state, in another dimension. This is called “moving from one world to another world,” but it is only the wisdom of Kabbalah that makes it possible to do this.

It is customary to think that when a person’s body dies, his soul disappears somewhere. However, this is not a soul, but a vital force that animates our body that remains to exist only in a spiritual form, in a form that is called a Reshimo (Reminiscence). After that, it becomes clothed in another physical body that develops according to the given Reshimo.

This spiritual parameter determines the characteristics of the body because the body must see its mission, which is to be fully compatible with the soul and those levels of development through which it must move. Each one of us has a Reshimo, not just people, but all creatures: still, vegetative, and animate. But, all in all, this is a Reshimo.

From this point of recorded spiritual information, a spiritual state, a soul, can either evolve or not evolve. It depends on the person, how he realizes himself.

But our body is not considered to exist independently. It possesses no value except that it must accompany and help in the development of the soul.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 6/9/16

The Secret Of Immortality Of The Jewish People, Part 3

The secret of eternity of the Jewish people is in their connection with the Upper Light. Throughout their history, lasting 5,777 years, starting from Adam, they are connected with the upper force. When these people don’t implement their connection and, therefore don’t draw the Upper Light in a sufficient quantity, they receive blows from it.

If the Upper Light isn’t revealed enough in the people of Israel, they are bombarded by miseries and troubles and are attacked by haters and enemies. Conversely, if the people of Israel strengthen their unity, the Upper Light comes closer to them, giving them a good life.

All other nations come and go, replacing each other in history. No other nation was preserved in its original state from ancient Babylon, and only the people of Israel are eternal. Nature is arranged so that if the Jews fulfill their mission, the Light emanates from them to the other nations, and everything calms down due to it.

However, if the people of Israel don’t obey the instructions of nature; in other words, they don’t work on their connection according to the conditions given to them, the Upper Light moves away from them. Then, the illumination of the Upper Light doesn’t go through the people of Israel to the other nations, and they blame the Jewish people for it.

The nations of the world are “consumers” of the Upper Light. The people of Israel must be a channel for it, and the Light itself comes from the Creator. Therefore, all three of them work together.

The Creator strikes the people of Israel, urging them to unite and receive the Upper Light from Him in order to pass it to the nations of the world, and the nations of the world relate to the Jewish people either with friendliness, with kindness, or completely the opposite, depending on their efforts to bring the Light to them.

This is how it works. The Jews stand between the Upper Light and the nations of the world, and therefore, they suffer from the blows from above and from below. However, even in the most difficult times, even after the Holocaust that was intended to destroy Jewish people completely according to the Nazi plan, these people have still remained.

They can’t disappear. After all, without them, all other people would not be able to reveal the Creator. This revelation can come to them only through the people of Israel. Therefore, the entire world blames the Jews, and the Creator also raises a claim to them because they are not fulfilling their mission.

The secret of the eternity of the Jewish people is in the fact that they are engaged in the realization of the program of nature. Material immortality means that this nation exists, hasn’t disappeared, and hasn’t been replaced by another nation.

However, this is a temporary immortality since our entire world is temporary and given to us for a period of 6,000 years that will be over soon. Until then, we must unite as one people. At the end of this process, all the nations will achieve eternity, not the material, but the spiritual one.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 10/13/16

New Life #777 – The Spiritual Revival Of The Nation Of Israel

New Life #777 – The Spiritual Revival Of The Nation Of Israel
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

Through Israel, the abundance should move to all of creation— the still, vegetative, and animate nature and mankind—filling them with the knowledge of the Creator.

The main points of this plan:

• A Jew is a person who has a greater desire than ordinary people, which is expressed in different ways.
• Our spiritual revival means connection. We undergo a four phase process of connection and separation.
• During the last exile, the nation of Israel split up into two major streams: the Orthodox and the non-religious. Today the assimilation in the US and Canada is immense. The Jews who have drawn away from religion are disappearing so the religious Jews are becoming even more Orthodox and more extreme.
• The wisdom of Kabbalah, the internality of the Torah, speaks about connection. The wisdom of Kabbalah leads to the revelation of the Creator in the connection between people, to the love of Israel, and to the correction of the soul.
• When we connect to each other and are as one bundle, we will feel how the upper force dwells among us, the force of love. Then we will draw all of humanity after us, which is called being a Light unto the nations of the world.
• If we want to ensure that our children remain Jewish, we have to teach them the method of connection according to the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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  From KabTV’s “New Life #777 – The Spiritual Revival Of The Nation Of Israel,” 10/13/16

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The Temple In Our Hearts

Torah, Deuteronomy 12:4 – 12:5: You shall not do so to the Lord, your God. But only to the place which the Lord your God shall choose from all your tribes, to set His Name there; you shall inquire after His dwelling and come there.

This is a temple in the heart of a person.

A temple isn’t some kind of building in Jerusalem or anywhere else in Israel where people rush to kiss its stones and the wall, as it is today.

The only time my great teacher Rabbi Baruch Ashlag and I were in Jerusalem at the Wailing Wall, he went to it no closer than two meters, looked, and calmly, without stopping, turned back.

Not feeling any holiness in these stones, he didn’t even come close to them, and I clearly saw a complete detachment from this place in his behavior. However, a common person is drawn to this, he needs such a toy, as a baby feels comfortable only when he holds a familiar rattle in his hands, so does he.

It is necessary to educate people so that each will feel that he is related to our common temple—the unity of the hearts. The common temple is the soul.

The Torah speaks only about the construction of the temple in our hearts and from our hearts.

The place is a desire. A desire in Kabbalah is called “the place,” because only in the corrected desire that is in the right place is it possible to receive the Upper Light, the revelation of the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/30/16

UNESCO Denies The Jews’ Ties To The Temple Mount

Comment: UNESCO has decided to deny the Jews’ ties to Temple Mt. and to Western Wall.

My Comment: On the one hand, UNESCO is an organization that depends on the UN in every sense, and on the other hand, it is hard to understand how it makes decisions that are opposed to all the values it is established on, although the Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova disagrees with the decision. How can someone deny the Jewish ties to the Temple that was built there in the past and to the Western Wall when everyone is aware of it. After all, it is not a new discovery that has only lately been revealed by some recent archeological findings.

What happens in UNESCO is a sign of what the Torah says: that if the nation of Israel does not unite and doesn’t convey the method of unity to the world, the world will be conquered by Islam and Europe will be painted in green, the color of Islam. The Arab immigrants are not asking to be accepted; they behave as if they own Europe, without any negotiations with the European governments. Their goal is to convert all the nations and peoples to Islam. Since everything happens exactly according to the plan of creation, Europe simply lends itself to this conquest. All the decisions are taken automatically until Islam will join Christianity and together they will conquer Jerusalem, just like in the days of the Crusades.

Question: But we will not move from the land of Israel. Will they manage to throw us out of here?

Answer: They can certainly throw us out, because if we are not compatible with this place, which means if Israel is not united, nature’s forces will naturally force us to leave our land. According to the Torah, if the Jewish nation connects, it sets an example of unity to the world, and unity is the salvation of all of mankind, not only from Islam but from the general crisis and from world wars.

This means that we will ascend to the next level of our existence or we will destroy ourselves, Europe, and the whole world in another world war. Basically only the Jews lead the world and we are the only ones responsible for its wellbeing and for the correction, and this means we have a choice. The rest of the world doesn’t have freedom of choice, only we do, so we are the ones who have to use it.
[195688]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 10/19/16

How Did Kabbalists Allow Two World Wars To Happen?

Question: How did Kabbalsits allow two world wars to happen?

Answer: Don’t think that a Kabbalist can wrap the whole world around his little finger. If that were possible, I would already do so tirelessly. Unfortunately, this is impossible.

People can turn the world together to the degree that they get closer to each other above their egoism.

There were not any Kabbalistic groups yet during WWI. They emerged toward WWII, but they were very few. The groups of Baal HaSulam’s students were the ones who partially succeeded in preventing great problems in the world, but not the major problems, which means not the Holocaust and not the actual war, although they contributed their share to the great victories over fascism in WWII.

A Kabbalist can partially affect the world through his corrections, but only by positive corrections, which means not according to egoistic calculations, but according to what is good for humanity.
[195017]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 5/29/16

How Can We Avoid An Apocalypse?

Question: If all of mankind are savages as Baal HaSulam says, does that mean that we should expect a similar fate that befell savages who were destroyed by more developed civilizations? Does the continuously developing egoism in great masses of unaware people guarantee the apocalypse of our civilization?

Answer: The savages were not destroyed. We were all savages, too, so we shouldn’t think that we are different. Even today, we are savages in a certain sense. Judging by how we interact in society, in the family, it is hard to say that we are intelligent creatures.

Our egoistic instinct drives us at any given time. We actually look worse than apes. Apes do not engage in self-destruction, whereas we engage in collective self-destruction consciously and deliberately.

There is no other species like homo sapiens in nature, an intelligent human being who aspires for self-destruction. We can live a happy life, but we make our lives miserable by constantly filling it with uncertainty, fears, and worries, which eventually lead to self-destruction. This is what makes us unique.

But our civilization will not be destroyed. We still must reach the predetermined goalthat nature has intended for us. We can choose the road we take. We can choose whether we will reach the goal along the path of suffering or along the good path, the way of the Light, which means by summoning the upper force unto us so that it will collect and organize us correctly.
[195051]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 7/10/16