The Spiritual Root Of Pride

Question: Can you please explain what the spiritual root of pride is? What is the root of arrogance?

Answer: It’s our egoism. In the world in which we exist, there is an “I,” the most important persona. Why? Because that’s how I experience myself. I am the most important, the most central, the most.

Our initial nature was intentionally created as the opposite of the Creator, so that as we begin to experience qualities of bestowal coming from Him, we can compare these qualities with our own egoistic qualities and begin to construct our understanding of the difference between this and that.

It is similar to the way we build an electrical system with various resistors, condensers, batteries, and other components. The elements may be opposite to one another, but thanks to the interaction between them, they create a correctly functioning system.

In our world too, everything is built on action and reaction because we, as created beings, can experience any property, sensation, or quality only with respect to its opposite: from darkness to light, from sour to sweet, and so on. There is no other way for us to discern anything. Two qualities need to be present in us, and we feel the difference between them.

The Creator has only one quality, the quality of bestowal, which is His initial state. He only created the quality of reception in order for us to exist and to be able to develop the quality of bestowal above it. It turns out that we exist in our world strictly in the movement from egoism to altruism. And this difference between them needs to remain.

Several interesting conclusions can be drawn from this. First, egoism is not destroyed, because otherwise we will lose the sensation of altruism. We cannot remove the quality of hatred, because without it we would not be able to experience love. We cannot get rid of sinners, thieves, and bullies, otherwise we will cease to experience what it means to be righteous. Everything is attained through contrast. That’s why it turns out that everything has to be in the world, but only in correct balance.

This is what the Kabbalist strives for because he understands how all of nature is constructed. He is not planning on destroying anyone or correcting anyone; he only demonstrates what exists in front of you, but what you do with it is your choice. In other words, this is a very generous methodology, relying on well-balanced individuals.
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From Kabbalah lesson in Russian 4/2/17

Why Did Dinosaurs Become Extinct?

Question: Why were the dinosaurs in existence for hundreds of millions of years? Does a Kabbalist know what made them extinct?

Answer: All the inanimate, vegetative, animal, and human life are gradually transformed into higher forms.

That is why the ancient fern and other plants became extinct, as did various kinds of animals. Even minerals have changed. According to researchers, you can tell how many million years old a particular rock is. Everything happens naturally.

The same holds true for the people. Just look at how different people living today are from those who lived a hundred or a thousand years ago. Even in their appearance, not to mention their level of consciousness.

If I were to teach Kabbalah today the way Aristotle and Plato wrote about it, claiming that the soul depends on how deeply a person breathes, I would be laughed at. Can you imagine what the great thinkers of the past wrote about?! With a deep inhalation and exhalation we fill our soul. And they really believed that is what the soul is.

Today, those great minds of their generation would look like silly boys if they remained on the same level because the constantly developing desire develops us. That is why we can not compare ourselves to other generations.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 3/19/17

New Life #887 – The Right Attitude To The Events In Our Life

New Life #887 – The Right Attitude To The Events In Our Life
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

What is the right attitude to the events in our life? Why is our development throughout history felt as suffering, and how can the recognition of the force that operates us affect this feeling?
From KabTV’s “New Life #887 – The Right Attitude To The Events In Our Life,” 7/25/17

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The Covenant In The Land Of Moab

Torah, Deuteronomy 28:69 – 29:03: These are the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.

And Moses called all of Israel and said to them, “You have seen all that the Lord did before your very eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, to all his servants, and to all his land; the great trials which your very eyes beheld and those great signs and wonders.

Yet until this day, the Lord has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see and ears to hear.

If you look from the side of the Judean desert, from the northern part of the Dead Sea against Jerusalem, then Moab stretches on the other side, beyond Jordan. Staying there, you are outside of the land of Israel, that is, you do not have to start correcting the desires for love, for reception for the sake of bestowal. However, these laws are already beginning to affect you.

Question: On one hand, it is written: “You have seen all that the Lord did before your very eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, to all his servants, and to all his land; the great trials which your very eyes beheld.” On the other hand, it is written: “Yet until this day, the Lord has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see and ears to hear.” Why is there such a contradiction?

Answer: It is because the children of Israel have just finished mastering the degree of Bina, which is bestowal for the sake of bestowal, purification of their desires, and now they must start transforming them to bestowal and love.
This means that they must see because this is about the Light of Hochma.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 28/12/16

Entrance To The Land Of Israel: Not Threats, But Instructions

Reading the chapter of the Torah “Ki Tavo” (“When You Come”), it seems that it is full of threats. However, these are not threats, but instructions that give us an opportunity to act correctly at a new level.

Let’s say that a person is engaged in constructing nuclear power plants. How long is it necessary to train him so he will work correctly with such complex and dangerous equipment?!

It is the same here, this chapter explains how to keep ourselves on the spiritual path and what all the tolerances and landings, measurements, controls, checks, joints, and so on should be.

“Ki Tavo” is a special chapter because it speaks about the entrance to the degree “the land of Israel.”

Question: Does it mean that if we make a mistake in producing “the nuclear plant” that is called “the entrance to the land of Israel,” then we will be undergoing a step-by-step trial?

Answer: We already are undergoing this step-by-step trial. Look what is happening in the world to this day. We do not even know the consequences of the Chernobyl accident and of the explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.

Question: That is, is a nuclear power plant just child’s play compared to the entrance to the land of Israel?

Answer: Of course! We somehow got out of this on the material level. Say, a couple of thousand people were killed, although in fact there were many more, another couple of thousand are ill due to the radiation, another couple of million people are also ill, but they do not know why. But humanity survived it all, and here it will not. Here the people that enter the land of Israel must move only forward, there is no turning back.

Ascending to this degree, you are obliged to fully obey the instructions, including all the slightest subtleties; otherwise, there will be a breakdown that will affect everyone.

Question: Do you mean that there is only an entrance and no way out?

Answer: No, you are kicked back from the land of Israel. This is what happened to us 2,000 years ago so that today we again will begin to rise to this level, and this is, in principle, what the wisdom of Kabbalah is preparing for us.

This is an entrance to such a level where even on the first degree you become similar to the Creator. This is called the land of Israel, which is when your egoism already begins transforming to the equivalence to the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 12/19/16

Be Afraid Of Fear

In the News (New York Times): “Climate change is essentially tied with the Islamic State as the most-feared security threat across much of the world — except in the United States, where cyberattacks are considered a greater danger than global warming, according to a Pew Research Center report released on Tuesday.

“Residents of 13 countries ranked climate change as the greatest threat to national security, while in 17 countries the Islamic State was considered a more immediate problem.

“In the United States, however, a gaping partisan divide pushed climate change to third-most severe perceived threat, after ISIS and cyberwarfare. Just 56 percent of Americans surveyed identified global warming as the most serious threat to the country, compared to 71 percent for cyberwarfare and 74 percent for Islamic State attacks.”

Question: What are your thoughts, what should a person fear most? 

Answer: A person is most afraid of fear. He is afraid that he will be gripped by fear and very much wants to avoid this state. And the rest is not important since it is all relative. That’s why we need to fear only the experience of fear and not all those things that stand behind it.

Question: What can we do to not be afraid of fear?

Answer: We need to rise above it, to the level where absolute confidence, freedom, limitlessness, eternity, perfection, and love exists. It is to this level that we need to rise rather than lowering ourselves to the bottomless pit of our consciousness or even worse, our sub consciousness, where rats, snakes, demons, devils, and worms, all those things that devour us exist. Because they all exist only in the experience of fear.

And the experience of fear is only triggered by the unknown, which is intentionally brought on to you in order to get you to rise and reveal the Creator. Because when the Creator is revealed, everything suddenly becomes clear, simple, and calm.

Question: So it turns out that the Creator is intentionally pushing us out of fear?

Answer: Naturally. He creates evil, as it is written in the Torah. The Creator says something like, “And now I will give you more of this and that. Moses, go to your people, they received another portion from Me.” Each time, more and more.

Question: Each time adding more fear?

Answer: Not just fear, but all sorts of problems in order for the people to rise above them and, in partnership with the Creator, turn them into a force propelling them forward.

Question: How are we to rise out of personal fears, out of all of these, as you say, worms, devils, and all those things that eat a person up?

Answer: That’s what the science of Kabbalah is for. We gradually rise along all the 125 steps. The Creator will constantly be awakening negative feelings, and we must rise above them to Him, our beloved. I only need to know: all that He awakens within me is experienced in my egoism. And if I rise above ego, there I will discover His love and devotion. And with respect to my egoism, I see that the Creator is intent on constantly arousing it with evil, fear, and so on.

Question: In other words, we can say that He hates my egoism and demands for me to rise to Him?

Answer: Naturally.
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From KabTV’s “News With Michael Laitman” 8/10/17

Global Responsibility

Torah, Deuteronomy 29:18 – 29:21: And it will be, when he [such a person] hears the words of this oath, that he will bless himself in his heart, saying, “I will have peace, even if I follow my heart’s desires,” in order to add the [punishment for the] unintentional sins [of this man] to that of [his] intentional sins.

The Lord will not be willing to forgive him; rather, then, the Lord’s fury and His zeal will fume against that man, and the entire curse written in this book will rest upon him, and the Lord will obliterate his name from beneath the heavens.

And the Lord will separate him for evil, out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant, written in this Torah scroll.

The point is that the verification must be very strict. It is based on completely new assessments of analysis, identification, and separation of certain properties from others, their correction, etc. And only after this does the correct use of the desire for receiving for the sake of bestowal take place.

After all, a period begins when you receive the upper revelation in your egoism to transmit it to others. You are the transmission link for all the other souls or all the other parts of one collective soul. Therefore, if you pass that poison that you may not notice inside yourself on to others, then it becomes your problem multiplied many times over. You are responsible for this.

It is written: “And it will be, when he [such a person] hears the words of this oath, that he will bless himself in his heart, saying, ‘I will have peace, even if I follow my heart’s desires.’” That is, you depend on others. When you start working in the land of Israel, you are connected to others and they depend on you because for them you are in some way a representative of the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 1/9/17

Ahead Of The Blows Of Fate

Question: If it just seems to us that we ourselves choose our destiny but in fact it has already been written in advance, then how does this program manage my life, how does it guide me through all the events?

Answer: You exist within this program as its passive element. It does not even need to control you because you are included into it as one of the transistors in the processor. Various signals go through this transistor and it seems to it that it lives an independent life. This is how you feel your personal life as a fragment of the general picture.

Question: In this case, how should I relate correctly to the various sad and happy events in my life?

Answer: Animals respond to everything instinctively in accordance with the inherent qualities included in the program. Therefore, they cannot have any independent reaction. People, however, have developed above animals and so they began feeling experiences associated with complex memory systems, and from them they built answers to the things that happen to them in life.

An animal reacts only to the momentary conditions, such as rain, snow, or a dangerous predator. But people have already begun to connect their destiny with different forces of nature, and therefore they started to worship the sun, the moon, and so on. They started bringing offerings to these forces, trying to appease them. This is how religions appeared.

Our forefather Abraham also made idols until it was revealed to him that he could not influence his destiny in this way. Religion provides only psychological help, which of course is also very important. But it does not influence the upper forces of nature in any way.

Question: Through what can you influence the upper forces of nature?

Answer: A person exists inside the forces of nature, under their influence. However, if he finds out to what goal they lead him, he will be able to go ahead of these forces. If he himself performs actions, even before these forces push him, then he will be able to advance voluntarily to the goal assigned to him.

The forces of nature advance him by sufferings, pushing him from behind, and he will advance through his own actions, striving to move forward.

Question: How will I find out to what goal the forces of nature are pushing me?

Answer: The wisdom of Kabbalah deals with this. By studying it, a person learns how to advance toward the goal. He will already have the vision of the state in which he should be.
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