Were The Prophets Kabbalists?

Question: Can it be said that the prophets were Kabbalists? And if yes, then why did almost all of the prophets complain?

Answer: Prophecy is one of the levels of attainment of the Creator. The book of Ramchal, a great Kabbalist of the 17^th century, called The Path of the Creator, describes spiritual levels of attainment, one of which is called “the level of prophecy.”

It is one of the levels Kabbalists attain, and you too can achieve this state. A person on this level is already above the limitations of time, space, and movement, and that is why he is called a prophet. In other words, he sees what will be ahead and what was left behind, he sees this outside of time and even outside of actions.

Question: Then why did the prophets complain?

Answer: It is because they felt regret for what was happening to humanity, how people did not understand that they were only harming themselves. It is very sad to look upon this, like looking at a young child, you understand that he brings unhappiness onto himself.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/18/18

The Study Of Kabbalah—Without Limitations

Question: Who is the study of Kabbalah meant for?

Answer: For everyone without exception because all who are born on this earth can attain their eternal state and remain in it by taking advantage of the opportunity given to them in this material life.

Question: What need can there possibly be for the majority of people to study this exalted wisdom?

Answer: The need is to understand the meaning of life and to attain it, rising to the next level of existence even before death in this world.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/18/18

New Life #1019 – Personal Capability In A Connected World

New Life #1019 – Personal Capability In A Connected World
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Summary

If you try to connect to others and fail, you need to examine the reason: what does nature want from you? Every person can adapt themselves to trends in the development of nature and learning to connect with people correctly. In the future, it will be necessary to feel connected to the entirety of humanity just as a small village was connected in the past. We will require a special education in order to learn how to communicate with all of society, nature, and reality as a whole.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #1019 – Personal Capability In A Connected World,” 6/5/18

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I Want Truth, Not Games

Question from Facebook: You always talk about playing a game. I hate this word. I want truth in a relationship, not games. What should I do?

Answer: Fate plays with a person. We should understand that we must play in order to draw the upper force that will change and correct us.

The game is not just playing, but checking one’s present state and orienting toward the future at every moment. Since the future is unknown and the present, in general, is not particularly evident, we are always in a fog, in a confused state: How should we proceed?

The correct behavior of a person in relation to the future is called “play” because we ourselves do not determine our future, just our attitude toward it.

Setting ourselves up for the correct attitude toward a good future will bring us good in the present. This is how we will advance.

It is very serious work, but since our next state is unclear to us, our movement toward each other, our attitude to the world, to life, even to the Creator, is like acting on a stage, when we are acting out our best future state, imagining what it can be. When we aspire to it, then accordingly, we receive it from above.

In principle, it is based only on the fact that the future is unknown, and I can determine it and its relationship to me, my inclusion in it, with the help of actions called “playing.”

Question: Is depression also a game?

Answer: Depression is also a game because we build a picture of the future as completely dark, foggy, unknown, and frightening in front of us.

In principle, Kabbalah discusses only about how we can achieve a real, true, and correct future. We need to create it. When I create this future, I build it from blocks. This is the game.

I am playing all the time, building it. If we correctly understand how to play and create our future from the blocks, it should be to connect these building blocks, what we should imagine. What’s most important is the relationship between us in a world that we can make beautiful. We cannot create it. So, we must learn to play.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman,” 6/5/18

Tisha B’Av (Ninth Of Av)

Our sages said (Tractate Yoma) that the Second Temple was ruined because of unfounded hatred. This is despite the fact that people in it were engaged in the Torah, the commandments, and charity, yet they did not do it selflessly but for the sake of a reward; that is, they fulfilled all the actions except for unification and therefore this work turned from the elixir of life into a deadly poison.

The Torah can be a deadly poison, that is, a medicine that helps kill an egoistic desire, and it can be the potion of life that enlivens the desire to bestow. It is the same upper Light. If it comes to the desire to receive while it is still egoistic and does not yearn to be corrected for bestowal, then it further hardens a person’s heart, leading him to the recognition of evil. Once a person recognizes his evil and truly wants correction, the same Light turns into a good angel.¹

First of all, we need to come to the recognition of evil; only it can lead us to the prayer, to the request for correction. The recognition of evil can be from my egoistic qualities, from the fact that I do not want to correct myself, or because I already want to correct myself but do not have enough strength for it. Strength is required not for the correction, but in order to ask the upper Light to correct me.²

The day of Tisha B’Av is grief over the broken soul abandoned by the upper Light, that is, the presence of the Creator. We have to bring it back. It is the fact that we do not want to bring it back, do not want to restore the broken soul—this is the ruin and crime that we should regret. That is, we do not mourn the destruction that once was, but our unwillingness to correct it here and now. We do not want to ask the Creator for our correction, we refuse even to approach this request. This is the real ruin.

We should cry not about the ruined building, but about ourselves, about our broken soul that we can, but do not, restore.³
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/22/18, Lesson on the Topic: “Tishaa BeAv (Ninth of Av)”

Communication With The Creator

Question: What is the Creator’s jealousy? If I am a part of the Creator, how can I be jealous of myself and in regard to whom?

Answer: To the extent that you fail to identify yourself with the Creator, there is an opportunity for jealousy. The Creator is jealous. He wants us to look at Him only. If we stop paying attention to Him, His attitude toward us changes dramatically in order to re-establish maximum connection between us again.

Question: Does the Creator have any qualities or feelings?

Answer: A person assigns various behavioral qualities to the Creator. One cannot perceive the Creator as the absolute because one cannot grasp it. Therefore, with regard to us, the Creator manifests in such a way that we begin to feel Him as an interlocutor, companion, partner, teacher, the one to whom we can attach ourselves and be in mutual communication.

Question: How does a Kabbalist perceive others if he or she is communicating with the Creator constantly?

Answer: I will tell you a secret. There are no others. I exist alone.

Question: Isn’t that lonely?

Answer: No, it is not lonely. Everyone is inside of me.

Question: What does communication with the Creator consist of: questions, dialogues, cries, arguments?

Answer: Communication with the Creator is built on the search for constant and ever-increasing contact, until the point of adhesion. Everything else is perceived just as an incentive, information necessary for complete contact.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/4/18

New Life #1018 – Personal Capability

New Life 1018 – Personal Capability
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum ben Moshe

Summary

A sensation of personal capability helps to envision a successful future and to bring it closer to us. From a young age, it is important to feel supported by relatives in order to build self-confidence and not give up too easily. Children need to be encouraged to follow their natural desires since desire is a prayer. Instead of teaching them to believe everything in life will succeed, which can lead to depression, it is good to teach them to exercise self-criticism in order to maintain balance in their endeavors.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1018 – Personal Capability,” 6/5/18

Video: Play Now | Download

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Medium: “’Survival Of The Richest’ Depends On Them Saving Us All”

Medium published my new article “‘Survival of the Richest’ Depends on Them Saving Us All”

Have you heard about “the event”?

Turns out “the event” is a codename for the systemic crisis approaching humanity in giant strides, a euphemism used by the world’s ultra-rich. Whether it will be triggered by an economic meltdown and massive social unrest, climate change, nuclear explosion, an epidemic, or cyber warfare, it will result in global catastrophe, and the upper echelon wants to be ready for “Judgment Day.”

To prepare for the inevitable, five tycoons invited media theorist and technology author prof. Douglas Rushkoff to give them some advice for the symbolic fee of half his annual income.

During the meeting, it suddenly dawned on Rushkoff that the super-rich had a completely different reason for investing in technology: all the newly developing cutting edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR and even the colonization of Mars, are seen and supported by the world’s elites as means to save themselves from “the event.”

While we see supermarkets without cashiers, autonomous vehicles and robots doing the work for us — the super-wealthy see means of protection against angry mobs and systemic breakdowns in the not-too-distant future.

Indeed, the wealthy and powerful few have a much broader view of global risk than most of human society. And yet, what they can see and predict is only a fragment of the overall picture. The multi-faceted human crisis originates from a completely different cause and happens for an entirely different purpose to what they understand, which is why they think they can evade it.

The actual “event” is a natural turning point in human evolution, and its origins begin no less than approximately 14 billion years ago with the Big Bang.

Through billions of years, the development of matter created gases, dust, stars and planets, and then the biological life of flora and fauna on Earth. But along with the expansion of the universe, nature also works to bring all levels of life into balance: from the inanimate, to plant life, to animal life, to human life. And our turn has just arrived.

Whether we realize it or not, nature is pushing us to come to balance with it. And that means becoming an integral, harmonious part of the natural system, which necessitates the evolution of human society as a collective species around the planet. Gradually, nature is amplifying our sensitivity to our global interdependence, forcing us to recognize the human network that we are all part of, and transform our societies accordingly.

No technology can stop the laws of nature and no bunker can keep anyone unaffected by them. But, we can learn how to go along with the evolutionary pressure, rather than against it.

To avoid becoming victims of an aggressive breakdown of our current culture, we have to acknowledge and prepare ourselves for our inevitably connected future. People have to learn about the laws of nature and how they form an integral system, where every element depends on its balanced connection with the others and how it complements them.

But that’s the just the beginning of humanity’s transformation. It’s no coincidence that in the last few decades there is a growing body of research from multiple fields confirming that positive human connections make us smarter and better in every sense, as well as happier and healthier. Human beings will have to discover and activate their inherent wiring for connection by consciously practicing it.

The more we practice our positive connections — personally, socially and globally — the more we see that we are coming to balance with the laws of nature, and that will become our new source of fulfillment.

Surely, the transformation of human society will require a massive socio-educational endeavor around the planet, using our media and our technologies in a new way and for a new purpose. The irony is that precisely the people like those who met Rushkoff have all the means necessary to make this happen. What they lack is only the understanding that the only way to save themselves from “the event” is to save human society as well.