The Era Of Understanding

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Baal HaSulam says that in this era we have a chance to hasten the process of our evolution and reach the Creator. How can we identify this opportunity and fulfill it?

Answer: We are living in a special time and we are indeed given a chance. First, because the Reshimot (spiritual genes) that are awakening in us urge and push us towards the revelation of the Creator, the revelation of the essence of life. It’s because that’s the same cardinal question that awakens in people. After ages of human evolution a person really begins to look for the meaning of life, and doesn’t just try to live a better more comfortable life.

Fifty years ago we still thought that corporeal benefits were infinite and we believed that the prospects of the consumerist society were endless. “Everything is possible: We will fly to the stars, we will control the forces of nature, we will swim in affluence…” This was the direction of our ego.

But suddenly we have reached a kind of satiation, because our desire has begun to change; we have not filled all our desires; we have not provided everyone with a yacht, a palace, a private jet, a private island, or a personal planet to himself. No, we have not filled our desires, but the desires have simply changed, just as a young child’s desires change: A minute ago he asked for cottage cheese, but while you ran to the store to get it, he already wants a sausage.

There are many hungry people in the world today, people who are ill and needy, but the desire changes and while they lack something, it is clear to them that even if they get whatever they lack, they will not be satisfied. There is a filling and there is satisfaction. It is like the example that Baal HaSulam gives when the guest says to the host, “Even if you give me the whole world as a present, I will not be satisfied, since it is not mine.” There will be a filling but there will not be satisfaction.

We are speaking about two very subtle discernments, as a result of which on the last level of our evolution, despite the dissatisfaction, and the shortage we feel in our desires, a person looks for meaning in his life. A new desire emerges, and it is from this desire that a person expects to feel satisfied, even if he doesn’t have a filling in his previous desires and his previous hopes are not fulfilled; even if he only has the simple things left, he will look for satisfaction in what is important to him now.

So after money, after control, after technological prosperity, after the information age, we have risen to a new level, the level of meaning. People feel despair and commit suicide because they don’t find a meaning to life. This is the first sign of the era of redemption.

The second sign for being in the era of redemption is the awakening of the whole world, not only those who are looking for a meaning in life. The world is sinking into a crisis that is basically an inner psychological crisis. A person cannot manage his private life any more, and neither can he manage human society. Everything is destroyed and out of control since our ego has completed its development and has finished its work, and by that has nicely ended its role.

Soon there will be new very unpleasant diseases that stem from our overuse of harmful, poisonous materials that we have added to our food and to other products. On the whole, there will be all kinds of negative phenomena that are typical of the use of the negative effects of the ego. We fear a nuclear bomb, a meteor that may hit the earth, but in the meantime one virus can totally annihilate the whole world.

Eventually this world that needs to be corrected, we are striving for that and the means are being discovered; internally and and externally we are shown that we are in a time of opportunity.
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From the 4th Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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One Comment

  1. Amen, let us not forget, it is a time of concentration and focus

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