Moments Of Unity, The Vilnius Convention, Part 2

Here is another set of pictures from from the European Kabbalah Convention that took place in Vilnius, Lithuania March 23-25, 2012.


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Play Everywhere And Always

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Do you recommend us to pretend that we already are in spirituality in order to accelerate our advancement? How do we do it?

Answer: How do we play with children? We show them how to do things. They want to become big and they play! And we often play with them.

We need to do the same. All of nature, a person’s entire growth is based only on game. Even now we play big, great people who are equal to the Creator. We want to ascend by one degree and become equal to Him. Can you imagine the audacity of this behavior?! Yes, I want to be like this!

When I wanted to become a doctor, a driver, or a cowboy as a child, I played pretend. Now we also play. Anywhere you go, play is really the method of ascending to the next degree. A person begins to age as soon as he stops playing. This is why I need to play even now without being ashamed of the fact that I do not know or understand who I am, why I need the group, and so on. We must pretend and play, and then we will achieve everything.

We are like a child who makes an effort and evokes the same upper Light; after all, the same force develops all of us. Only we now wish for it to develop the next level in us, based on the example we draw from the upper nature, and not our world.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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Behind Every Successful Man There Is A Woman

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Should women act as if men already are in the quality of Lishma (altruistic intention)?

Answer: No! Women should not think that men already are on such a level. They must view them as children: All of us are participating in this game together. They treat men as a mother treats her children and as a wife who sends her husband off to work.

They say that there is a woman behind every successful man, and this is really true. It cannot be any other way. So we want to be some lucky men!
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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A Cobweb Of Connections

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: There always has to be a connection between a man and a woman. When they are a son and a mother, this connection is of the son’s love for the mother and the mother’s love for her son. When they are a husband and a wife, this connection is the woman’s love for the man and the man’s love for the woman. When these are friends who share a single aspiration and goals, there needs to be sympathy and friendship between them. What kind of connection should we have?

Answer: In our world, the connection between a mother and a child or a man and a woman and so on comes from us being on the same egoistic level and trying to achieve something on it. There are only two of us who exist: a husband and a wife or a mother and a child.

But in our case, there are three of us: men, women, and the upper force—the Creator. In Him, the three of us connect together in mutual love. It’s never the two of us who connect! This is not animalistic love or a physical dependence. It ties us together only because we have one goal, and in it, all of us connect together into one common whole. This is why this is a completely different feeling, which has nothing in common with animalistic attraction towards one another.

Pardon me saying this about a mother’s feelings for her child, for example, but basically this is what exists on the animal level.

But here only the Creator and nothing else obligates us to have this connection. It is only the Creator because we demand for Him to manifest between us. We would be absolute strangers without Him. In other words, every time there is a relationship between myself and my friend, a man or a woman, I imagine the revelation of the Creator between us.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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Strive and You Will Find!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The transition to a new level must be conscious. What exactly do we need to do to make conscious actions?

Answer: There is nothing specific we can do to make our transition, actions, and journey conscious. We only can wait for changes to happen within us under the influence of the upper Light. My efforts only evoke the upper Light, the upper energy, which affects me.

Even now I do not know what will happen to me in the next moment, even in my regular life. All this comes from the outside and is revealed from Above every moment of my life.

It is the same with spiritual work. I direct myself toward the quality to bestow, but it has to come to me and affect me, and then I will begin to understand what is happening to me. I myself can only contribute to my aspiration, but I am unable to understand.

Here, we need to be acutely aware of the fact that our drive upward, forward, is always accompanied by a question, a desire for it to actually happen. The upper Light comes from Above and provides a response. It gives us the answer since nothing can come from us. I only wait for the upper Light to manifest within us.

Since we do not have a strong enough question, desire, and drive forward yet, Ohr Makif (the Surrounding Light) does not manifest sufficiently. Is a question equal to the first portion of the Light in its intensity of desire appear in us? This is what matters.

Strive and You Will Find1
Reaching this level means that we are reaching the threshold value of our question, our aspiration, our desire. Then, we find the answer right away. The Light always operates in a discrete manner, like inside an atom. When an electron drops from one orbit to another, it releases a quant of light. In order to lift it to an orbit, it needs to be charged with a quant of light. Then it rises and once again drops and releases a quant of light, and so forth, according to the laser principle. Nature is the same everywhere. This is why the same principle operates here.

We must rise to the threshold level.

Right now we are on one level, and we continue jumping up to reach the second level, but we are not reaching it yet. We constantly slide down, losing this level, try to rise again, and once again, we lose it. How do we jump over and rise to the next level? Once we rise to it, we will no longer descend, or fall from it.

Strive and You Will Find2

Let us say that you are trying to jump onto a table. You jump halfway, three quarters of the way, or a quarter of the way. Every time, you fall back to the ground. Once you manage to land on the table, you will continue to stand there.

This is what we need to do. We are not willing to accept anything less than this.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2

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Science: The Moment Of Truth And Limitations

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What indicators will let us know that humanity has started to realize the integrality of the world?

Answer: The awareness of an integral and interconnected world has started in the last few years. Scientists were first to note it, and today the mass media is talking about it as something natural and self-evident. It turns out that the crisis is really global and really caused by human egoism, and the world is indeed a single system.

And as for scientists, they are already talking about a program inherent in nature and about different dimensions of existence. Leading quantum physicists speak of it in particular, and some of them are no longer afraid to declare that matter as we understood it previously doesn’t actually exist, and the world is built on quantum effects. At first we knew about certain substances, then we discovered atoms and believed they were indivisible until we revealed the world of subatomic particles. And now even these particles are making room for a certain “cloud,” which condenses into a picture of the world only under our gaze. There are no waves even, everything is “smeared.” It’s a scientific fact and nothing can be done about it.

As a result, scientists are talking about a single unified force, which in our perception appears as particles, waves, and all sorts of individual forces. It sounds almost the same as the section on perception of reality in the wisdom of Kabbalah. Essentially, traditional science has almost reached the limit of its capabilities, and this is why it’s in a state of crisis. There’s simply nowhere to develop further with the exception of the military field, which traditionally bathes in abundance.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/2012, Writings of Rabash

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Escape From The Egocentric Picture Of The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What are our first steps of coming closer to the Creator, which is the goal of the wisdom of Kabbalah?

Answer: In spirituality, coming closer is not determined by time or space, or by mechanical motions, but by changes in properties, by quality. I need to develop additional sensations within me, a whole new feeling called bestowal. Right now I perceive all of creation only in the egoistic property, in pursuit to constantly receive fulfillment and enjoy whatever is good for me, while pushing away whatever I find unpleasant.

I behold the world only through these categories of good and evil. It’s like a dog that perceives the entire world just through scents and who can tell one thing from the other only based on how it smells. It sees virtually nothing and receives 99% of its information from olfaction. In the same manner, today we differentiate everything around us only relative to our egoistic desire: black and white, different colors, tall and short, distant and proximal, pleasant and unpleasant—thousands of different properties that I perceive in this world.

I do not even realize that I make judgments only based on how good or bad I feel personally. There is a grid inside me which discerns all impressions depending on whether they benefit or harm me, and this is how I determine all the colors, distances, times, movements, as well as various objects and their behaviors—I discern everything according to one egoistic principle.

I don’t even understand this because this egoistic sensation is the only thing that I have, and I cannot recognize its presence within me since I was born with it. Everything is perceived on the grid of the detector called my desire to enjoy. Like in photography, which requires a light-sensitive plate or film, within us there is a certain screen that is sensitive to what brings us benefit or harm.

In accordance with this I distinguish various forms and objects, even inanimate things: a glass of water standing on a table, different colors, people, cold and warmth, or distances. I evaluate everything from the perspective of what is better and what is worse for me. These are such refined differences that they paint me the pictures of this world, which I see in front of me. But all of it exists only in perception of the egoistic desire to enjoy.

In order to not depend on it wholly, the wisdom of Kabbalah is leading us towards desire to bestow. And within that desire I begin to see a “reverse world.” That is, I see all of reality through the eyes of bestowal, meaning to what extent each thing is useful for my bestowal towards others.

It is written: “The Creator made one against the other,” and in revealing both of these paradigms I can rise above these two principles of perception. Thanks to this, it’s as though I rise above the entire creation.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/2012, Shamati #190

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 04.17.12

Preparation to the Lesson
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “Igrot,” Letter 10
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Zohar for AllPassover “Bo (Come Unto Pharaoh),”Matzot (Unleavened Bread) of Din,” Item 169
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 6, Chapter 15
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Writings of RabashCome Unto Pharaoh-2
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