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Weekly Torah Portion – 06.05.13

The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion, Selected Excerpts

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The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion, Selected Excerpts

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The Power Of Unity

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When the integral network is fully connected and all are 100% included in each other, when it has the support of a higher level of nature, then nobody can influence it negatively. But we are talking about a system. How can there be a complex system that nobody can influence externally?

Answer: Everything depends on the quantity and quality of the people who are linked in integral unity. We are not talking about a forceful, destructive influence or about the physical annihilation of the body that happens during a war, for example, that is something else. We are talking about ideology, about an inner connection between us. In this case, all external influences that aren’t integral cannot influence us. They can only help our integration into a stronger, higher society.

For example, if birds or fish are joined together they can defend themselves from predators. Why won’t any predator attack a school of fish that moves as a unit? How can this be? Is the predator afraid of them? Paradoxically they pass him by or he passes them by, and nothing happens. Try to examine the phenomenon and connect it to human society. I think that there are many historical facts about this subject.

Unity causes the appearance of a new, higher power, and I would say that people who are united even have a particular luck that maintains, helps, and heals them. This is how it’s arranged by nature.

But an aspiration towards unity in every circumstance exists only between us humans, the egoists, and therefore it’s carried out in a very painful way. We are constantly colliding, “exploding” like stars, connecting and dispersing again and again. Ultimately, whether we want it or not, we are creating around us or within us a more and more compact system of connection.

We see that the world has become enormous. All of humanity has scattered throughout the world, and on the other hand, it aspires to connection. Therefore it doesn’t matter how much people want to get away from each other, this is the opposite side of unity among them. This will lead us towards unity anyway. And this is a paradox!

Question: But we have often gotten together to do something bad. What leads to that type of unity?

Answer: There exist two levels of unity: virtual, integral, and nationalistic, individual. Therefore if we explore each case on a nationalistic level, we need to describe how this comes to be reflected on an integral level.

If on a nationalistic level there are clashes between us and we are found in difficult situations of conflict, this is not saying that the integral level is damaged. On the contrary, it could be that this proves its necessity. For example, we come to blows. What is the benefit? And if we unite, perhaps we will attain mutual benefit from this.

That is, what we see with our eyes is not the whole picture. You see, there is evolution and the laws of nature according to which we develop; they lead us towards unity, even though this is to happiness “by the rod.”

Question: So then is it better for us to unite for something bad than to be divided, but not by good deeds?

Answer: The person measures his short life according to its happy parts, and if he speaks about the problems, as is understood they are rejected. Come, let’s think about how to reach a good state through a good condition.
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From KabTV’s  “Wisdom of Crowds” 5/14/13

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Covering The Gap Between The Opposites

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: We already have a large world group; there is a teacher and primary sources. Why is so difficult to realize the law of love for others as for oneself?

Answer: Indeed, it may not be so burdensome to hear about it, but the problem is with its realization. We initially need to understand and to become aware of the fact that the two different parts, the “plus” and the “minus,” must be connected with each other. In the physical level of nature, everything is simpler: There from a higher degree, the Creator obliges various elements to become connected and in general they build the atomic structure.

What is it? Why do the particles not scatter from each other? The fact is that there are some forces that oblige them to interact in spite of the opposition between the two. The negative forces repelling them from each other belong to matter to the “vessel” (Kli), and these are the forces of rejection, hatred, and polarity. The positive forces necessitating them to be together are the forces of love. That is why it is said, “Love will cover all transgressions.” It’s love that covers the gap between the opposites.

We observe these mechanisms in atoms and molecules where things become much more complicated due to calculations of the previous and following stages of development, etc. Either way, calculations are always done according to the same principle, becoming more and more difficult with time.

It’s worthwhile to view the entire universe in this light. No one teaches us to love; we are talking precisely about the law of nature. Once, Abraham discovered it; it’s said that while looking at the sky, he asked questions about who created the world and for what. He was prompted by that era’s escalating conflicts between the Babylonians. Mutual hatred was growing and Abraham tried to understand: Why? From where could the power of unity against the forces of separation be taken?

Internally scrutinizing the still, vegetative, and animate nature, he realized that the entire creation, except for man, is imbued with the law of unity that obliges all the parts of creation to be together. That is why they live and develop. People are another thing: The confrontation between positive and negative is constantly increasing in them. Where then is the opposite force of connection and love at the human level? How could it be brought into action?

Apparently, Abraham understood that the Creator had entrusted this work to man. We ourselves must add this part and complete creation. That is why it’s said that the Creator starts and the righteous finishes.

So, if we don’t start to work on love for the other, the connection between us is severed. For example, in Europe today, the process of unification does not continue in the right way and the continent is torn apart. The absence of “additions of unity” everywhere leads to the growth of opposition and eventually to explosion. This is the perspective of humanity at all levels, be it that of the family, raising children, etc.

That is why we must work on correct unification, meaning above the “plus” and the “minus.” Don’t touch them because everyone will remain with his inherent properties. Work only on “love covers all transgressions.”

We need to understand that the positive and negative cannot live without each other. Conceptually, there is no Creator without the created being and there is no created being without the Creator. They can exist only jointly. In this case, the two opposites always repel each other, and then the third force resolves their contradictions, strengthens their bond. This mechanism gives rise to development, life.

For many years, scientists have been struggling to solve the mystery of the emergence of life. Where did living cells come from? What gave them birth? An excess of love gave them birth. The force supporting the still nature out of an excess of love begins to develop additional desires and then we demand more. I don’t settle for mere existence, I want to understand, to feel, and to comprehend all of reality, and this need gives me life that began with corals and has evolved to the most complex structures.

Ultimately, it’s the Creator who slightly illuminates the still matter, and it becomes vegetative. A little bit more Light, and it turns into animate. Just a little more, and the human degree emerges.

Thus, covering the positive and negative, the “plus” and “minus” with love, I form from them a system, an atom, for instance. If I add a greater power of love to it, then I affect the positive with negative strongly and thus cause imbalance. There is seemingly a surplus of energy and besides saving the relationship, they “think” about something greater. The spark that I have brought prompts them to search; the excess of strength draws them forward. This is their life force.

 

Covering The Gap Between The Opposites

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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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A Heroic War Against Weakness

Dr. Michael LaitmanRabash, “What to Look For in the Assembly of Friends”: …that a person should make an effort to obtain love of others. And this is called “labor,” since he must exert above reason. Reasonably thinking, how is it possible to judge another to a scale of merit when his reason shows him his friend’s true face, that he hates him?

It turns out that we must exert ourselves when we don’t want to. I don’t feel any urge to work, have no desire for it and no interest in it. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be considered exertion. I am not attracted to love the friend and value him. Perhaps, I actually must look for such states when the friend doesn’t interest me, and I don’t enjoy being with him, and I feel that I am opposite to him. Then, I can see to what extent I can love the other and can check whether it obligates me to exert myself.

Sometimes, during a big convention or a special event I am impressed by the general spirit that is shared by everyone. Then, of course, I feel fine. However, the moment I leave this external influence, I immediately fall. This means that I don’t wake up by myself. I don’t feel like thinking about the love of friends and about connection. The greatness of the goal also disappears, and I pass the time aimlessly until I feel another awakening from above again.

However, it is during this time when we feel lifeless that we must exert ourselves since when I am revived from above, I have nothing to add of my own, and I am totally operated on from above. It seems that I operate myself, but I am totally operated on from Above and am under the domination of the upper. Therefore, everything that I do is not on my account at all.

Only when I don’t feel the spirit of life and I obligate myself to exert myself is it considered on my account. Then, it is called exertion, a prayer, an intervention from below that draws the Light that Reforms. This Light will make me feel attracted to others, to love the friends, and this will now be on my account.

This is all true provided that I have brought about the intervention from below, in response to which there is an intervention from above, which is the Light that Reforms that I have drawn. Thus, my correction also will be mine. When I feel distant from the friends, low and uncaring, I revive the spirit of life. The problem is only in how to exert myself, how to yearn for the love of friends in times when one feels totally lifeless.

Thus, as it is written, “Everything that is within your power to do, do.” You should think about this, discuss it, and consult one another as to what needs to be done. This is actually considered our exertion.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/13

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Believing “Above Reason” That Bestowal Is Above Receiving

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we create the right atmosphere in the group of ten so that each of us will feel that everything that happens in life is only for his own good and that this is what the Creator wants?

Answer: We need the society’s support in order to accept everything in “faith above reason.” It doesn’t mean you should just say everything is for the best without thinking, like people who feel they are righteous do. We want to accept everything that happens as beneficial and to see everything in the Light of the Creator as a means for the correction of our vessels. We try to reach correction so that we will really see that everything is for the best, that it comes from “there is none else besides Him,” from the good and the benevolent.

Everything that I have at present is good and I have to rise to the next state by the actions that are taking place in me. The environment has to help me feel the Creator’s actions as good and beneficial.

In order to do that I have to rise to “faith above reason.” This is a very confusing concept, since one can just blindly say that everything is for the best even if he feels like he is torn to pieces. But “a judge only knows what his eyes can see.” So “blind faith” is not “faith above reason” even if a person is confused and has received the power to act for a certain idea from the environment.

We have to organize the whole system correctly so that it will operate on us and help us yearn for bestowal. “Faith above reason,” which means bestowal, should be more important for us than receiving. But a person cannot reach this feeling since he doesn’t have the power to do so and so he shouldn’t just lie to himself.

We have to turn to the group so that it will provide us with an increasingly growing feeling of importance of the advantage of bestowal instead of receiving. I am impressed by the environment as to how important this attribute is just as I copy all its corporeal values. Society is strong in quantity and quality and I submit myself before it and absorb the feeling of the greatness of bestowal from it.

After I am impressed by it, I have to connect with the friends and with them to develop a great deficiency for acquiring a new attribute for self-change. This is now a different type of submission before the society.

First I had to receive the importance of the goal, the importance of the Creator, the importance of the teacher, the importance of the study. These are ordinary things, just as if I want to be a tailor and have to be in the society of tailors in order to learn the profession from them and to be inspired by its importance. But if I want to attain the force of bestowal, I have to be incorporated in a group and to submit myself differently. Self-submission is the inner connection between us following all the conditions that Kabbalists have set, submitting to the friends, the teacher, the study and the way for attaining the goal. I don’t have to just be incorporated in this society but must actually submit myself before it and thanks to that to receive the Light that Reforms.

The Light that Reforms influences me, and thus the group, the teacher, the study, the goal of creation, and the concern for all of humanity all become dearer to me. It all becomes more important. This means that I am already in the process of correction.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/13, Writings of Rabash

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Overthrowing The King In The Company Of Thieves

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe sparks are the most important part and our correction depends on them. The Direct Light is dressed in the Returning Light; there are a Light and a vessel that become one whole and complement one another. It’s because they totally depend on one another to the same extent.

The Returning Light that has lead to the revelation of the Direct Light disappears and becomes a thick flawed Light, and is therefore called a “spark.” It used to be the most important Returning Light that the Creator’s revelation depended upon, but now it’s like a king who has been overthrown, which is a terrible ugly state, as it’s in a critical humiliated condition.

It is the Direct Light that doesn’t have the power to be the Returning Light, the Light of love and mercy. Now it’s possible to use it for different purposes: If you want to cheat someone, you can pretend that you are interested in him and use him to your advantage. You use the Returning Light in order to bestow, but your bestowal is false, and therefore it brings about an even greater shattering, greater fraud, the greatest crimes, and all by the Returning Light that has lost its power of love that enables it to be like the Returning Light.

After the shattering, the Holiness helps the shell and begins to serve it. My desire to receive uses my understanding of bestowal in order to get the greatest egoistic advantage very cunningly. All human wisdom and advancement now support the egoistic desire.

As long as the Direct Light and the Returning Light were dressed in one another, they complemented one another, but when they are separated, the Returning Light becomes thick and remains shattered below. But if we turn it around correctly, it will be able to provide us with an impression from the Light that matches it in spirituality and that once used to cooperate with it. If we try to remain in the Returning Light, it begins to mold in us the vessels that match the Direct Light, new attributes, definitions, and understandings as to which Light it can match when it’s dressed in it.

Thus we work with the sparks, with the Reshimot (spiritual genes) from the Returning Light. We don’t simply yearn for some abstract form of bestowal, but rather recognize the sparks of bestowal, the Reshimot, begin to understand what Light should appear before us, and get to know it according to the attributes that are opposite from it. In the concealment we gradually begin to identify the Creator. The darkness itself reveals the daylight to us.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/13, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Leaders Of The New Century

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: A charismatic leader always gives direction to and encourages people. As a rule, he is quite authoritarian and in some cases even tyrannical. Will this trend be evident in the leaders of the 21st century or will their qualities change due to human evolution?

Answer: Leaders will use all the human and superhuman qualities necessary for and according to the new paradigm to which we are heading. But they must change. They will be educators because humanity needs to be re-educated, and this is the main problem of our time. After all, the masses of unemployed will require re-organization, to be placed in open universities, schools, and to be provided with television programs, scholarships, etc.

Human life will be subject to a strict schedule. The perceived need that will arise in people will lead them to the state that all their life they will be engaged in self-improvement:  public, national, and global, and everyone will have to contribute.

Everyone will have his own responsibilities, changing his egoism to collaboration with others in the shared global, integral society. He will have to achieve a sense of a different existence “outside the body” where I don’t live caring about my animal body, but am occupied with “the human being within me.” This requires very serious, great leaders, meaning educators who understand human psychology and aim their leadership precisely at raising people to a new level.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/18/13

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Don’t Let Your Spark Be Extinguished

Dr. Michael LaitmanRabash, “One Should Always Sell the Beams of His House”: Each of them had a spark of love of others, but the spark could not ignite the light of love to shine in each, so they agreed that by uniting, the sparks would become a big flame. Hence, now, too, when he is spying on them, he should overcome and say, “As all of them were of one mind that they must walk on the path of love of others when the society was established, so it is now.” And when everyone judges his friends favorably, all the sparks will ignite once more and again there will be one big flame.

The goal of creation is to reach the force of connection, the force of love in which everyone feels the deficiencies of the other and fills them. But it’s impossible to do that alone, since a person doesn’t have the power for it. There is only one tiny spark in him that pushes him towards the goal and he doesn’t even understand what he is drawn to and why.

This is why we must connect, so that everyone will receive the power of the spiritual connection: the power of the collective desire, the power to connect the hearts, the power of love. This is why we come into this world in which we connect physically by our bodies, by different external actions. These physical actions draw the Light that Reforms upon us which connects our tiny sparks into one strong general flame.

Each one receives this general force and only by that can he feel it and use it. This Light obligates us to unite all our spiritual sparks and to be inclined to mutual bestowal. Then, by the general force of bestowal that is now in each of us, we can begin to work and to perform spiritual actions of bestowal and to ascend.

It turns out that by using our physical bodies and the corporeal work that is a result of egoistic intentions we evoke the Surrounding Light that connects our sparks into one spark, into a flame, that becomes the force of general bestowal, love, and connection. Then each one receives this force. We don’t split it up like loot, but rather use it together, by being in the middle, within it as one whole, as a group of ten, for example. Then each one can use this force and thus begin to perform spiritual actions and not corporeal ones. The first stage is called the stage of preparation and the second stage is the stage of correction: first “to bestow in order to bestow” and then “to receive in order to bestow.”

A person who doesn’t operate in order to connect with the friends in a group of ten doesn’t actually use the only means to attain spirituality, which means that he is not in the stage of preparation. The stage of preparation is when we use all the means we were given in this world, on the corporeal level, in order to reach the force of bestowal, the force of connection.

The phase of preparation will not be over as long as the group of ten doesn’t fulfill itself and becomes as one man by the Light that Reforms. The moment we connect and acquire the general force of connection that is enough for fulfilling the actions of bestowal, it means that we transcend the Machsom (barrier), the border of the spiritual world.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/29/13

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The Letter Samech Is A Sanctuary

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe letter Samech is such a beautiful letter, an attribute that saves and raises a person from the kingdom of the shells (Klipot) and gives him power, support, and confidence, a home. It is a round letter, like the womb for an embryo that provides him with shelter but cannot develop him.

It only helps a person exit the shells and acquire the attribute of Samech, which means the ability to be free of the domination of the shell, the ego. But in order to develop more, he needs to return to the egoistic forces, to the shells, and to take as much as he can correct from there, and thus grow by the correction.

It turns out that instead of being beneficial the letter Samech becomes harmful, since it’s in a person’s way of developing. It’s like a mother who loves her child very much, until she simply strangles him in her arms, holding him without letting him be independent and grow.

In order to grow there must always be two opposite forces working mutually in order to reach the goal, by the middle line. It’s impossible to manage without the letter Samech, which surrounds a person, provides him with a safe shelter, and guards him. A person hides in this attribute and can be free of the domination of the shell, the ego, and break away from it.

But what happens after he breaks free? He has nothing in this state, he cannot do anything! He must descend into the shell again and when he is protected by the forces of bestowal, continue to develop himself.

Therefore it’s impossible to create the world by the letter Samech. No letter and no attribute have the powers that can bring the world to the desirable correction. For each attribute there is an opposite attribute. This is done on purpose so that we can develop.

My matter is a desire to receive. First I have to change my intention of “in order to receive” to a neutral intention and then to “in order to bestow” by which I begin to use my desire to receive “in order to bestow.” This means that first I use my desire negatively, “in order to receive,” and then I begin to use the same desire positively, “in order to bestow.” So there have to be two opposite forces that operate on me, one against the other, and by these two forces I reach the middle line.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/27/13, The Zohar

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