The Unconscious Development of Humanity

Question: What is the cause of the unconscious development of humanity for tens of thousands of years?

Answer: It seems to us as if this is a very long period of time. The universe and inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature developed precisely in order to clarify the difference between light and darkness.

This took place initially at the lowest, inanimate level, in atoms and molecules, etc. Then, it continued on the vegetative and animate levels, in various biological and zoological components of nature. Afterward, it took place on the human level of our world, not only in physiology, but also in human psychology.

Only after that can a person come closer to being worthy of starting research on a spiritual level.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/10/17

The Greatness Of The Creator

The Creator is a force that fills and arranges everything we think, see, feel, and say. The created beings have nothing in and of themselves. The Creator created and developed the will to receive. He fulfills, guides, and operates it. Therefore, we perform no independent actions. They are all actions of the Creator. There is none else besides Him.

Yet, even though the Creator completely controls us and performs all actions through us, we were given a special opportunity to be independent. We can be called independent creatures to the extent that we become like the Creator, but this is true only for those unique individuals who acquire faith in the Creator: a sensation of the upper force.

These unique individuals act exactly the way the Creator wants them to, but by their own will. All other people act in the same manner as the rest of nature—intuitively, unconsciously, and under the Creator’s full control. They only consider themselves “free” due to their limited perception. However, when people discover the Creator and yearn to resemble Him completely, they then become exactly like Him, and yet they are independent and free.¹

The Creator created the will to receive. He guides, develops, and organizes all of its actions. Indeed, this will to receive completely depends on the Light and intuitively performs all the actions that the Light dictates. We see that this is how inanimate objects, plants, animals, and even human beings behave.

The Creator, however, chooses some people and gives them an opportunity to acquire the Creator’s powers, to make actions on their own, but only in order to resemble Him. Then they become free. Depending on the degree to which the person has ascended, the Creator ceases to operate them (either partially or completely) because the person operates himself exactly in accordance with the Creator’s desire.²

The Creator fully governs all of nature on the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels. It is as if the human level does not exist. However, when a person becomes like the Creator and begins conducting himself like the Creator—when he learns this governance from the Creator and therefore is called “the wise disciple”—he ascends to the next degree and becomes “human” (“Adam“). This elevates him above the animate level, making him similar to the upper force and allowing him to attain the Creator.³

The sensation that the Creator dresses into a person—into all his desires, thoughts, actions, and impressions—is called the degree of obtaining faith. The person feels that the Creator governs the entire world by way of good that does good.

Faith above reason is the sensation of the Creator in all our organs, in our entire essence. A person must try to feel that the Creator governs him and the entire world by way of good that does good, despite the fact that the Creator spoils this sensation for him and shows him the complete opposite.⁴

The state of final correction is the complete dressing of the Creator into a person—when the upper force is felt in all our organs. We feel that the entire world is governed by the upper force and we have always performed and are performing actions of the Creator: first by coercion and then by our own will, with our consent. This is why we become devoted workers of the Creator, working out of love.⁵

A person’s work is to try resemble the Creator, as if He is dressed in us and He completely operates us. To the extent that we can imagine this state, we are inspired by it and turn the desired state into the existing one. The Creator has chosen us, and we are making steps toward Him. He loves us. He awakened us out of love, wanting us to resemble Him and to reach His state. We should not just imagine, but really feel how to do this.

We must try to establish such relationships between us, as if the Creator already dresses in us. Then we will feel how much our desired state fails to correspond to our existing state and we will raise a prayer (MAN) to the Creator, wanting to be in the Creator’s reality, not just in our imagination.

This is the person’s work: to force ourselves to imagine that the Creator is dressed in us and all our actions are defined by the sensation of the Creator in all our organs, in our relationships, and in our minds and hearts. However, since this is not yet our reality, but only imagination, egoism helps us understand the gap between the desired and the existing states, and we raise this gap to the Creator as a request for correction.

After all, in reality, we do not yet have faith, the sensation of the Creator, in all our organs because we have no spiritual organs to act as the connection between us where the Creator can dwell. Therefore, we turn to the Creator with the prayer to correct us and connect us in order for Him to be able to dress in us.⁶

The prayer includes two states: the existing state we see from our existing sensory organs and the desired state in which we imagine ourselves as if already connected with each other and that the Creator is revealed to us and dwells within us. The gap between these two states creates a great lack with which we turn to the Creator.⁷

The prayer must be built on the basis of the clarified gap between the desired state and the existing state. The prayer is not just a desire to eat a delicious apple. Through our efforts, we need to build the desired state within us, that is, to imagine the connection between us in order to reveal the Creator between us and to bring Him contentment.

Then we see that our current state is insufficient and inaccurate. The gap between the desired and the existing states becomes apparent to us and we raise it to the Creator. In answer to our prayer, we receive new desires, requirements that we did not have before and that we formed ourselves.

It is through them that we build our human degree, which we did not have before. From the Creator’s side, only inanimate, vegetative, and animate degrees are given. The human degree does not exist in matter, but only in thought and desire, and it is exactly what we are building now.

The degree of a person, Adam, is the inclination to get closer to the Creator. We need to envision it similarly to how we envision everything else we want in this world: I am in a certain state and want to change it to a better one—this is the desire of any living creature.⁸
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/18/18, Lesson on the Topic, “The Greatness of the Creator”

The Times of Israel: “Starbucks & Roseanne: America’s Moment Of Reckoning Playing Out On Twitter”

The Times of Israel published my new article “Starbucks & Roseanne: America’s Moment of Reckoning Playing Out on Twitter”

When Roseanne Barr sparks a storm over a racist tweet just as Starbucks closes 8,000 stores for a massive anti-bias training, you know that America is going through moments of reckoning with regard to its racism problem.

Starbucks’ executive chairman, Howard Schultz, believes “we are living in a time in America where there is a fracturing of humanity.” But in my view, the fracturing was there before and this time is unique in that we can see things a lot clearer and move forward a lot faster.

Today’s interconnected world made it clear to Starbucks that they need to make a serious move if they wish to maintain good business, just as it made ABC move quickly to cancel Roseanne’s hit TV show.

American society, however, can use this unique point in time to make some clear moves towards a more united future.

First of all, we should not take for granted that people who provide service will be objective towards their customers. It takes an educational process and ongoing practice, and it shouldn’t take a crisis to get there. All people who work in customer service should go through a basic training session or series of sessions, where they learn how to relate equally to all customers, with no regard whatsoever to how they look or where they’re from.

Companies and public services should be required by law to qualify their employees before they put them on the job. If America truly wants to wipe out all remnants of racial segregation, this training should be mandatory for organizations in order to keep their license to operate.

Now, while regulations may work for customer service situations, when it comes to our attitudes to each other as a society, there is a gradual psychological process that needs to take place. We have to go beyond slogans and moral preaching and develop an actual sense of our common humanity.

Let’s face it. The racial divide will not go away by itself. We have to work on it as a society. We also have to realize that people are products of how they were educated, their childhood influences, and what they’ve been through in life. For some people it’s easier to overlook differences, and for others it is not.

The solution is that above all differences, we continuously work on achieving a higher level of social unity through activating our inherent wiring to connect as human beings at every possible opportunity.

For instance, what would happen if the U.S. as a whole would practice something similar to what Starbucks just did? How about a basic training for solidarity and human connection that would be introduced at all schools, workplaces, federal agencies, and so forth?

From a global perspective, society is only beginning to scratch the surface of our true nature, and there is nothing to be ashamed of because we were all designed the same way. We need to lay this all out on the table and understand how to work with it.

Interestingly, I said it all in a tweet just about a month ago – a tweet liked by Roseanne Barr.

New Life #989 – The New Rationality, Part 2

New Life #989 – The New Rationality, Part 2
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Summary

Nature is an integral system. It is super-rational and flawless. In order to be in sync with this rational system, human beings need to acquire a new nature based on the quality of bestowal. Our current, egoistic nature is harmful to others and we are deteriorating into an abyss in which everything is for sale. It is necessary for us to pass though this stage of development called the “recognition of evil” in order to embrace a new approach in which everyone is equal and we treat others as ourselves. We will require a new education and leaders who understand that our lives depend upon the lives of others because all of us are a single body.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #989 – The New Rationality”, Part 1, 4/1/18

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Everything Is Formed By The Light

Question: What is more important: the Light of pleasure or the desire? Does the Light form the desire or is it possible to reverse the process where the desire determines the quality and the quantity of the Light?

Answer: Everything is formed only by the Light—it is the first and it is the last. And we have to incite it.

If we do so correctly, then the Light comes down upon us and fulfills its function, and if we do it incorrectly, then we are influenced by the compelling forces of nature acting on us that still correct us under the Light’s influence, but in an unpleasant way.

The Light is the Creator’s desire. Surrounding Light is all around us, and it gradually prepares us for its reception.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 12/3/17

A Look At The World Through A Different Lens

Question: Can a Kabbalist change reality?

Answer: A person can change the reality he is in because it completely depends on his own qualities. Today, we all exist in the same qualities, within a specific framework, and that’s why, to us, there is a shared perception of the world, similar concerns, experiences, etc.

A Kabbalist who starts understanding creation sees the world entirely differently, although his animal perception through the five material sensory organs remains the same as everyone else’s.

It is as if two devices appear, and he sees differently through each, as if looking through red and blue glasses.

Question: Does it mean that there is a double reality for such a person?

Answer: No, this is not a split personality, like in our world when a person doesn’t know who or what he is. There is no such thing Kabbalah.

By perceiving two opposing qualities in oneself, a person rises above them, in the middle line, and experiences reality with respect to the spiritual level on which he exists. Thanks to this duality, this stereo perception, he begins to experience everything not from his point of view, but from the point of view of the Creator.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian, 12/10/17

New Life #984 – Bitterness And Sweetness In Life

New Life #984 – Bitterness And Sweetness In Life
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

All of creation is a desire to enjoy. What causes pleasure is defined as sweet and what causes pain is experienced as bitter. People feel pleasure when they attain food, sex, family, money, honor, and knowledge. Kabbalists, however, know that true pleasure lies in giving to others and they direct their desire to enjoy in this way. The wisdom of Kabbalahteaches us how to get out of the old perception of sweetness and move onto a new one so that we can see the upper world.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #984 – Bitterness And Sweetness In Life,” 3/25/18

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Newsmax: “Ireland’s Abortion Referendum: A Global Perspective“

The largest portal Newsmax published my new article “Ireland’s Abortion Referendum: A Global Perspective“

This week’s dramatic referendum in Ireland showed that the majority of Irish people want to do away with an age-old law by which women who have abortions, and doctors who help them do so, could face up to 14 years in prison.

But as abortions become legal in Ireland, something far more revolutionary than a change of laws is being born.

The transformation taking place in the conservative Irish society reflects the global thrust of liberalization, shattering one social convention after another across modern human society. Day by day, man frees himself from various social frameworks that used to control his thoughts and dictate his behavior.

More Freedom Demands More Maturity

Let’s take a glimpse at history. From monarchies through various dictatorships, to the democracies of our time which continue to change shape in modern times, a natural course of human development becomes evident. The individual is gradually taking over the reins for his/her family and possessions, body and behavior, and all of the components that make up his/her identity.

But here is what we can easily miss: Freedom must be accompanied by maturity of the human being, if we are to maintain balance in society.

As we relieve ourselves from the chains of the past and march into the future’s freedom, we have to cultivate human awareness to a whole new level. With every limitation that’s being lifted, one should ask himself: How am I connected to other people around me? What is my natural obligation towards them? How do my actions influence everyone else?

We are entering an era where answers to these questions will no longer come from clergymen, government officials, laws and regulations, or any institution that aims to dictate people’s way of thinking. Instead, it will come from the inner development of the human being, or if you will, our “spiritual” development.

Yet, hoping for positive human development to happen by itself is not what I am suggesting. Rather, I am certain that we need to begin educating ourselves as a society by illuminating existential questions, learning about human nature, and preparing for the interdependent state the world is coming to.

In other words, I am advocating an expansion of human awareness in society as a whole. And as a result, the individuals in society will better understand how to conduct themselves towards balance.

Freedom Through Interdependence

How does that work? We should take our cues from how nature maintains a “dynamic equilibrium.” When looking at life within the human body, we see contrasts such as heat and cold, organs with various functions, different kinds of germs, active and passive forces, and yet they all work together in balance and reciprocity, complementing each other. It’s the principle of life that works without our involvement.

We humans, however, must develop and complement each other consciously and volitionally. Our development as human beings demands us to reach balance and reciprocity at all levels of life.

If we won’t develop the ability to do so, giving ourselves more and more freedom may manifest very negatively in the form of terrorism, crime, and other forms of abhorrent behavior. Without the maturity to maintain social balance, we could find ourselves plunging into social-familial-political chaos to the point where one only does what’s right in his own eyes and for his own sake.

I believe we will come to see that neither money nor power can drive us to seek social harmony; only education that aims to raise human awareness will help us sense our interdependence and appreciate our common humanity. And the more we develop the human being inside of us, the more we can free ourselves from limitations outside of us.