Audio Version Of The Blog – 02.24.13

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Fundamentals Of Kabbalah – 02.24.13

A Virtual Lesson on Fundamentals of Kabbalah

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A World With One Free Point

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why does a person have to openly say: “The world was created for me?”

Answer: A person has to discover that the world was created for him, that everything in him and around him, and that all the attributes and the actions he sees are aimed at and lead to the correction of his soul, but it’s only if he uses all this correctly and there is nothing else.

Everyone is facing the world of Ein Sof (Infinity), but he perceives this Ein Sof as the picture of this world. If he attributes all the states to the world of Ein Sof according to the principle of “There is none else besides Him,” “the good and the benevolent,” and if he gathers all the times into one point, realizing that they all refer to one idea and that they all lead to one root that returns us to one goal, then he will be able to say openly that the whole world was created only for him.

Everyone should do that: Everyone has his own world since he discovers the world in his desire; he discovers that everything else is his own mental strength and he is the only one who has freewill. Now it seems that there are other forces in the world beside him, but this is only because he hasn’t reached the recognition and the decision that the whole world is inside him, depicted in him and is meant for him, so that he will be able to reveal the general unity.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The Right To Work Is The Greatest Reward

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe are controlled by two opposite forces that have to reach the right intensity and resistance in order to enable us to be born into the new world. So a person encounters many interruptions that come from the Creator, and thus feels resentment and anger.

I see this kind of attitude in many of my students as if they are waiting for this birth to occur by itself, as if everything will happen by itself, naturally, and the time will come for everyone to enter the spiritual world. But of course, this will not happen to anyone if he doesn’t have the desires, the necessary vessels. The main thing is to prepare our vessels. How can we prepare them if not by overcoming difficulties and problems?

It’s as if some people are “doing me a favor” in coming to lessons and participating in dissemination, expecting they deserve some reward for it; they want to show me what they have done and how much work it entailed. They don’t seem to understand that they need this work in order to stabilize their spiritual vessel, their soul; but instead, they think that they are doing me or someone else a favor.

There are students who think that by their dissemination efforts they “pay” me, in a way, for the lessons I give. They don’t understand that without building the external circles they will not acquire the vessel of their soul, and they believe that they are making an effort for me.

Thinking this way is is a total lack of understanding: A person has to pay the Creator for having given him a chance to invest his powers in the right actions, which means to build the vessel of his soul. The reward is actually not what he thinks at all; our reward is that we have a chance to work, to exert ourselves and not in order to work and then receive a reward. This is a corrupt attitude that needs to be clarified.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/19/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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The Right Definition Of The Godly Force

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe effort we have to make in order to enter the spiritual world is beyond a person’s powers. It’s like having to lift the weight of a ton. A person can’t do that, of course. But if 50 friends come to a person’s aid, everyone lifts 20 kilograms and that is certainly possible.

The work of the Creator is arranged in the same way. This is done on purpose so that a person will yearn for quality and not for quantity: so that he will not just be attracted to the Creator, but that he will really yearn for Him, for the one force. This one force can be reached only if several individuals connect to attain one goal. Therefore the connection leads us in the right direction.

A person advances by mutual guarantee, by mutual commitment, and by measuring his concern for the Creator according to his concern for the friend in contrast to his concern about himself, his relatives and about whoever is in his inner circle. Then he prevents alien thoughts from dominating him, and if they appear it’s only so that he can clarify things and separate himself from them.

Everything is arranged so that nothing can be done alone. If a person discovers this, then at that moment he begins to advance. The main thing is to feel one’s self-weakness and the need for the environment’s help. Then he is ready for mutual guarantee and he defines the Creator, the Godly force differently, by accepting it as connection and unity based only on the many that are connected into one.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/20/13

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Automation Against Man

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Robert Skidelsky, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University, fellow of the British Academy in history and economics, member of the British House of Lords): “What impact will automation – the so-called ‘rise of the robots’ – have on wages and employment over the coming decades? Nowadays, this question crops up whenever unemployment rises.

“In the early nineteenth century, David Ricardo considered the possibility that machines would replace labor; Karl Marx followed him. Around the same time, the Luddites smashed the textile machinery that they saw as taking their jobs.

“Then the fear of machines died away. New jobs – at higher wages, in easier conditions, and for more people – were soon created and readily found. But that does not mean that the initial fear was wrong. On the contrary, it must be right in the very long run: sooner or later, we will run out of jobs. …

For those who dread the threat that automation poses to low-skilled labor, a ready answer is to train people for better jobs. But technological progress is now eating up the better jobs, too. A wide range of jobs that we now think of as skilled, secure, and irreducibly human may be the next casualties of technological change.

As a recent article in the Financial Times points out, in two areas notoriously immune to productivity increases, education and health care, technology is already reducing the demand for skilled labor. Translation, data analysis, legal research – a whole range of high-skilled jobs may wither away. So, what will the new generation of workers be trained for?

Optimists airily assert that ‘many new types of job will be created.’ They ask us to think of the lead drivers of multi-car road trains (once our electric cars join up ‘convoy-style’), big data analysts, or robot mechanics. That does not sound like too many new jobs to me. …

“It is not true that automation has caused the rise of unemployment since 2008. … If escape from poverty is the goal, disguised unemployment is a bad thing. But if machines have already engineered the escape from poverty, then work-sharing is a sensible way of ‘spreading the work’ that still has to be done by human labor.

“If one machine can cut necessary human labor by half, why make half of the workforce redundant, rather than employing the same number for half the time? Why not take advantage of automation to reduce the average working week from 40 hours to 30, and then to 20, and then to ten, with each diminishing block of labor time counting as a full time job? This would be possible if the gains from automation were not mostly seized by the rich and powerful, but were distributed fairly instead.

“Rather than try to repel the advance of the machine, which is all that the Luddites could imagine, we should prepare for a future of more leisure, which automation makes possible. But, to do that, we first need a revolution in social thinking.”

My Comment: The revolution in social thinking can be done only by introducing universal education for a new type of society with respect for others, work distribution, that is, in teaching the conditions of existence in an integral community.
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A Company, Aimed At The Future

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Can a manager reveal inside a company an integral connection within it?

Answer: Of course! Integral education assumes interaction and development of people in small groups.

Can you imagine what connection will be at the workplace, what energy it will release, what perspective it will show, and everyone will understand what they do that is right and wrong? It will be a company aimed at the future, and no matter what it produces, its products will get to people like fresh pies from the oven.

Question: But for the time being, will the owner pay employees as it is customary in modern society?

Answer: He will have to pay what employees require. And they will not demand more. Relationships with each other and collective interaction will give them such a sense of inner fulfillment, such a reward, that they will not have the desires above normal physical needs.
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From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/6/13

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Emotional Fulfillment – To The Forefront

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Can a criterion of reward for employees at the workplace be not the result, but a person’s personal qualities of being able to connect people together in a team? Perhaps, they do not give visible results that could be reflected in a chart, but nonetheless, the mood of a team depends on them.

Answer: The general atmosphere and the general health of a team, which is felt as fulfillment, depends on those who can bind the team together. “Not by bread alone shall man live.” These people, graduates of training at our centers, are much needed at workplaces. A person needs emotional fulfillment.

The other day, I was talking to our representatives from Italy. Currently there is a huge rate of unemployment. What are people doing? They are gathering together, buying houses, remodeling them into apartment houses, and converting them into communes. It turns out that in this way it is much easier to survive the crisis, problems, and everything else. In addition, they experience an emotional comfort because they are together: husbands, wives, and children.

A feeling of mutual help suddenly gives a person such fulfillment that he does not need luxury items, holidays in exotic locations, etc. It turns out that in this way nature brings us to another form of contentment.

Today, workers in Spain and Italy already agree to work for half a salary, but they are more united among themselves; they have elements of the commune there.

We see that by this means, nature pushes people to unite. Integration is ahead. Either we come to it along the good path, understanding what awaits us in the future, and then we do not need problems and crises, or we will still get there through suffering, problems, unemployment, deprivation.
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From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/6/13

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A Reprimand That Is Worse Than Punishment

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: From the perspective of the integral approach, what is considered punishment?

Answer: Only a reprimand. Anger results with punishments and dismissals. With a reprimand from society, a person feels the lack of one’s lack of perfection that a person must correct in some way.

Together with this, condemnation from colleagues doesn’t have to be arrogant, but gentle, as if indirectly.

Besides that, it is possible to influence a person through the family, through the wife, not directly, but through a third party. It is a very effective “lever.” You will see how much it will encourage a worker. Such a system is much more effective than punishments or other actions of the society.

In any case, one needs to match himself to people! We can’t always place them in frames that are not suitable for them. If you see that they are not able to execute something, then it is preferable to do something that would be effective both for them and you.
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From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/7/13

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Keeping Up With Nature

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean for an entrepreneur to “keep up with nature“?

Answer: It means to recognize new needs in a person, to see how they develop differently in different layers of society because society is divided into parts, and these parts gradually evolve towards greater emotional contentment, and material fulfillment remains at the level of necessities and no more is desired.

You already have a package to meet new human needs, and you give it to people as a carrot to a rabbit, “Look, what I have!”

The solution is directed towards emotional needs, but the material needs are also taken into account, which are focused more on what is closer to a person. In the past, humanity chased both necessities and what was above necessities.

Now, a person’s inner demands gradually change, but not because I have ten fur coats in the closet, but because values suddenly changed in me.

My desire becomes more selective. The level of necessities, which is required to support my physical, animal state, remains. But the upper level, the so-called “fat,” is becoming narrower, is cut and turns to a new area: virtual, abstract, astral. A person needs fulfillment because he has a void within. But if you provide him with virtual fulfillment together with the basic necessities, he will follow you and demand like a small child, “Give me more!”
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From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/6/13

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