Audio Version Of The Blog – 08.31.14

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/download/audio/eng_o_rav_2014-08-31_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’31.8.14′]

The Urgency Of Sochi And The Breakthrough Of Saint Petersburg

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Not everyone has the opportunity to come to the convention in Saint Petersburg in September. How can all the friends in the world help each other to connect to it?

Answer: This convention will engage the Sochi group, that is, those friends who were doing dissemination work in Sochi this summer, and in three days, we must go through what they went through.

Clearly, not only those who are coming to Saint Petersburg will participate, but rather all our groups and students from all over the world. So, all of us together as a whole, by internally feeling all that they felt and experienced in Sochi, will absolutely acquire a new level. We are standing before this. We are waiting and expecting from them preparation for realizing the convention in Saint Petersburg.

There is no obligation at all to come physically to the convention. A trip is not at all relevant to this. Distance means nothing. I saw this in the example of our groups in South America who adhere to us without separation through integral connection and are tightly connected with the daily lessons. They simply have no feeling of detachment or of distance.

It is the same thing with the friends in Sochi who wholeheartedly let me go home after a one day visit so that the following night, I could transmit a lesson to everyone. I feel that they also have the same feeling, the same connection, the same fulfillment and satisfaction from the lessons.

So, all of us are mutually connected, and there are no problems for anyone regarding connecting to the convention. Someone who really cannot come to the convention doesn’t need to take the trouble and invest superhuman efforts beyond the limits of his ability. It is preferable to organize mirror conventions in your groups where you keep maximal contact, and I assure you the same intensity of connection and the same enthusiasm. If you are with us, then we are with you as if we are found in a single place.

In general, we want the experience in Sochi to be conveyed to everyone in sensation. Our great world community will be integrated with what they go through and their experiences, so this will be a very good level.

Our friends, men and women, attained a very good and beautiful mutual cooperation and mutual integration there, truly real dedication. We hope that we also will be integrated with them. This is why friends exist.
[142256]
From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/26/14, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
Israel Is Not Geography
There Is Something To Envy
No Preparation – No Convention

The Secret Program Of Kabbalists Comes To Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I’ve heard that today’s Kabbalists’ program is to prepare people for the revelation of the upper force. Could you please tell us about this program?

Answer: This program is not secret. If it belongs to the people and, ultimately, to the world, then, of course, there are no secrets. Kabbalists wrote about our time since the days of the prophets.

It is said that all the prophecies belong to the era of the Mashiach (Messiah – the end of correction), in which we find ourselves today. Baal HaSulam indicates this in the articles “Time to Act” and “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar” and others.

This period began in the 16th century, with the Ari (Isaac Luria), called Mashiach Ben Yosef, who began the process of the final correction. Beginning with him and further, Kabbalah was more and more developed, through Baal Shem Tov and his disciples.

That is, we are in the process, which began not today, yesterday, but within the program, which has been realized for thousands of years, gradually moving towards its conclusion. Beginning in the 20th century, after Baal HaSulam wrote the article “The Last Generation,” after everything that was written by Rabbi Kook and Rabash, we can assume that we are on the home stretch.

The activities of the Kabbalists of all times and generations were focused on our time to ensure that we have already begun to implement the correction among the entire nation, in the masses. That’s what we are doing.

There is a clear indication that the time for this has come. The Jewish people have returned to the land of Israel. But for the time being, this nation does not correspond to the true definition of the people of Israel, and this land does not match the definition of the land of Israel; we still need to achieve this.

This is the place where we live “as if” the people of Israel in the land of Israel is under tremendous internal and external stress. We are divided into many currents within, confused, and do not know who we are and what our purpose is.

Our nation is divided into a huge number of factions, camps, opinions, and parties. Among us there are many people who hate this country, among the Arabs, and among the Jews themselves. Our situation is very precarious, and we have recently found ourselves in confrontation with the whole world. The entire world is against Israel. There are growing anti-Jewish sentiments and pressure on the Jews in all the countries.

Many Jews abroad also oppose the state of Israel. For example, behind the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, acting with anti-Semitic statements, there is a group of twenty Jews who support him and curse Israel even more than he does. The same phenomenon can be observed everywhere.

The Jews living abroad hope to secure a safe future in this way. But we already saw how this ended in Germany seventy years ago. The nations of the world do not like Israel and the Jews, regardless of whether there is a war in Gaza or not.

Therefore, we must explain to the people intensively and as soon as possible on what our good and secure future depends. If we talk in terms of the wisdom of Kabbalah, we can say that the only thing missing in the world is the revelation of the Creator, the general force, managing the entire universe, including our small world, humankind, and the people of Israel within it.

All this is in the power of one force, which is called the Creator (Bore), from the words “come and see” (bo-re), because we are able to reveal it. We reveal it due to the fact that we are getting closer to it. As we approach and reveal the upper force, we are counted worthy of an absolutely good state.
[142188]
From KabTV’s “Kabbalists Write. Preparing the People of Israel for the Light” 8/20/14

Related Material:
A Good Future Depends Upon Discovering The Upper Force
A People Or A Bunch Of Refugees?
A War Between Good And Evil

Partial Correction

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus” (Metzora), 15:1-15:3: And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, if any man has a discharge from his flesh, his discharge is unclean. And this shall be [the nature of] his uncleanness due to his discharge: [if] his flesh runs with his discharge, or [if] his flesh is plugged up by his discharge, that is his uncleanness.”

The fact is that before we reach the end of correction, we complete the correction of even one desire. In the integral system, there are five layers of desires that are fixed in turns: stages zero, one, two, three, and four. Each of them is incorporated into the others. That’s why it’s impossible to completely fix one desire while all others remain uncorrected.

So, how does it work? We deal with the part of a desire that correctly relates to a desire that has already been corrected. It’s a continuous “start-and-stop” pulsation. First, one part of a desire is corrected, then there comes a part of another desire. Next, there comes a second part of the first desire, and so on and so forth…

It’s an integral system, which we approach step by step. In other words, we come close to integrality by using a differential method. Otherwise, nothing at all can be corrected. We are not integral by nature. We are split into squares, cubes, etc. However, in the end we will acquire the integral shape.

Thus, it’s unfeasible to fix even the tiniest desire before the entire system is corrected. That’s why a constant return to correcting the same desires at a higher level or with a new quality, happens in conjunction with the rest of the chain.

Comment: Previously, we discussed uncorrected parts in a human body, we spoke about a house. All of a sudden we again return to a human body…

Answer: It’s because when one climbs to the next step, one discovers new problems.

There are analogies to it in this world. For example, the more medical tools we invent, the more diseases we discover, although we looked quite healthy before we started to investigate our current condition using new methods of diagnosis. It’s similar to reading a medical encyclopedia. As soon as we start flipping its pages, we immediately come to the conclusion that it would be much better to lie down and die.

This is what the Torah describes: returning to your own self, but at a higher level.
[142019]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/5/14

Related Material:
Layer by Layer Purification of Desire
Balance Is A Guarantee For Health, Longevity And Success
When You Feel No Taste In Spirituality…

The Long Road Towards The Good

Dr. Michael LaitmanDuring spiritual development a person passes through a multitude of stages before reaching despair. From despair he further experiences all kinds of states until he discovers that only the Creator can help him.

If we are in a group, then as it is said, (Isaiah 41:6) “They helped every one his neighbor.” We remind each other that the Creator is the one who is giving us all kinds of exercises and that behind all of these states that happen to us we must discover Him at every moment. But we are confused by forgetting about this between these moments that all of this is coming so that we will ask Him to be revealed. By ourselves we are incapable of discovering the Creator.

About this, Baal HaSulam writes in the article, “There is None Else Beside Him”: And the benefit from the rejections is that through them a person receives a need and a complete desire for the Creator to help him, since he sees that otherwise he is lost.

So we must focus all of our attention on how to discover the Creator in everything that is happening with us. We must check what the Kabbalists recommend for us to do when we are studying, when we are in a group, and when we are disseminating so that all of these activities will be directed towards discovering the Creator in every situation that happens to each of us and with all of us together.

The Creator only helps those people who truly want to get closer to Him. It is impossible for them to stop in the middle of the way and remain in the false situation they are currently in.

If a Reshimo, a desire to approach the Creator, is truly awakened in them, He helps them by placing them in even more complicated situations where it is even more difficult to comprehend, understand, and agree that everything comes from the Creator. Or He lets them relax; everything is okay, everything is wonderful: They study, they advance, they disseminate, everything is going well and they have no lack of anything.

But if the person invests effort in every circumstance and tries to gather additional desires with the help of the group and work with the external public, all of these desires acquired from the friends or from the external world become parts of his soul if he gathers all the desires from them, all of the deficiencies for fulfillment, all of their failures in life. He transforms them into a single desire, a single demand directed towards the Creator. So He organizes all of this for them. And then he cannot justify the Creator and he is so confused that he is not prepared to attribute everything to the Creator only; he thinks that all kinds of other causes and forces may exist.

And by beginning to be involved with them, the person suddenly sees that he is not linking everything to the Creator. Likewise, he cannot say that everything that is happening is for the good. So he has a reason to advance, there is an imperative to shout to the Creator to help him so that He will give him the right perception, so that He will be discovered. But this is not because the person is confused. In this case he would be asking from the side of the ego for things to be better and more pleasant for him, for everything to be okay.

On the contrary, he wants to remain confused and have claims against the Creator. By not agreeing with Him, he blames Him for what is happening in the world and cannot bring himself to a state in which he sees that all of the events that are happening in the world, even the most difficult and worst situations, all this is a higher mercy and everything is coming from the good and that does good.

And all the vile and terrible situations only pass over our ego so that we will be distanced from it, and will purify ourselves of it, and then they will all remain in the ego, whereas, we detach ourselves from it and move toward the side of the Creator.

This means that the blows only help us to distance ourselves from the ego and move to the other side. They don’t pass over us, but over our ego and are felt in us to the degree that we adhere to it. But if we rise above it, then the blows remain there, within the ego.

Likewise, through these blows we must understand that this is the Upper Light that is shining more strongly than usual, but it cannot shine within the ego, so within the ego it is felt as the opposite, as darkness. And this darkness in the density of our desire, of the still, vegetative, and animate, and speaking, brings us the feeling of a world full of suffering.

If within this desire on the speaking level we build a group, with its help we can become detached from every egoistic desire. Then we rise like a spaceship and take off towards the Creator.

That is how we detach from all the bad sensations and are very happy about this because we begin to discover that there is none else beside Him and that He is the good that does good, and now we can say that about Him and not blame Him. We see the truth and so we are happy, not that we now feel that things are good for us, but because we can say good things about the Creator.
[142035]
From the Convention In New Jersey “Day Two” 8/9/14, Lesson 4

Related Material:
Discover The Creator Through All The Screens
The Force That Fills All Of Reality
If It Seems You Are Going Backward

The Essential Secret Of The Jews, Part 34

From the book: The Essential Secret of the Jews, M. Brushtein.

The Postulates Of The Theory of Integrality

We all live on one planet and are linked like members of one family.

The human being has grown from a small and weak creature into a mighty giant.

All religions, beliefs, and various spiritual practices unanimously declare: humanity must achieve universal unity.

In contrast to the plant or animal, we evolve from generation to generation, and each following generation is more progressive than the previous one.

Any atom, molecule, or living organism is in balance. Then an additional desire is revealed, which brings the object to equilibrium at the next level – more perfect.
[142051]

Related Material:
The Essential Secret Of The Jews, Part 33
The Essential Secret Of The Jews, Part 32
The Essential Secret Of The Jews, Part 31

Temporary Postponement

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus” (Metzora), 14:37-14:41: And he shall look at the lesion. Now, [if] the lesion in the walls of the house consists of dark green or dark red sunken looking stains, appearing as if deeper than the wall, then the Cohen shall go out of the house to the entrance of the house, and he shall quarantine the house for seven days.

Then the Cohen shall return on the seventh day and look [at the house]. Now, [if] the lesion has spread in the walls of the house, the Cohen shall order that they remove the stones upon which the lesion is [found], and they shall cast them away outside the city, to an unclean place.

We can feel and trace things described above inside our desires. The entire world is given to us through our sensations and there is nothing besides desire.

That’s why the Torah says very clearly and explicitly that we feel things at higher levels as forces or as desires that are “materialized” in various shapes, colors, scents, etc. Still, they are only desires and nothing but desires.

The Torah, “Leviticus” (Metzora), 14:42-14:43, 14:45: And they shall take other stones and bring them instead of those stones. And he shall take other [mortar] dust, and plaster the house.  And if the lesion returns and erupts in the house, after he had removed the stones, and after the house had been scraped around and after it had been plastered, then the Cohen shall come and look [at it]. Now, [if] the lesion in the house has spread, it is malignant tzara’ath in the house; it is unclean. He shall demolish the house, its stones, its wood, and all the [mortar] dust of the house, and he shall take [them] outside the city, to an unclean place.

We, humans, are the ones who produce ulcers. We even manage to incorporate new, good qualities that are given to us into our egoism and spoil them.

First, one can work with an egoistic desire that is called “a house,” but when one regards it through the Upper Light, one understands that it’s impossible to work with this desire alone. This is why one destroys (postpones) it.

This desire is not being cancelled, but rather is taken “outside of the city” and “discharged.” It means that correction of this particular desire is deferred. After working with “the house,” one corrects “the yard,” and then the entire world. That’s why one way or the other, we still return to correcting deferred desires.
[141972]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/5/14

Related Material:
When You Feel No Taste In Spirituality…
Corrections In Society And Outside It
Light Desires

The Healing Power Of Music

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can the music of the spiritual (upper) worlds influence us under modern conditions when people distance themselves from real values and strive to receive material pleasures? How much can it influence listeners, even subconsciously?

Answer: Great higher power is in the music of the spiritual (upper) worlds because a person feels this music when he reaches the higher strata of our world.

He feels nature on its subtle and higher levels, where the signals and forces control that are later lowered and descend to the level of this world, working with the material of the still, vegetative, animate, and human, shaping our thoughts and desires.

He feels forces that descend into our world and carry out particular actions in him (we call it evolution or history) on a higher level. He seems to ascend higher than our world and begins to feel these forces as they descend into our world.

The moment he feels them, they are much stronger than when they descend and are clothed in all kinds of directing signals in all types of material, including us.

So when we simply listen to the melodies of the spiritual worlds, without conveying them to any other images, they act on us in a good, positive, and beneficial manner: purifying, pushing us towards higher desires, and directing us towards better cooperation with other people.

Besides this, they bear a tremendous amount of information. Even though we don’t understand it, it begins to work on us positively and beneficially in that it balances and even heals (in the broadest sense of the word) all physical, moral, and mental defects.

I consider that this music should be listened to as a medicine. It prepares people so that they can gradually perceive it more deeply.
[141982]
From KabTV’s “Conversations with Michael Laitman” 2/9/14

Related Material:
Music Untangles The Strings Of The Soul
The Music Of Baal HaSulam At The International Music Festival In Moscow
The Simplicity Of Greatness

Israel – Built Upon A Borrowed Framework

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe nations of the world subconsciously feel that a calm and secure life in this world depends upon the people of Israel, so they come to us with complaints. We must understand that under the conditions of the today’s ongoing crisis, the pressure on us will continue to grow. After all, the worse it is in the world, the more the nations of the world will blame Israel for all of its troubles.

The nations of the world clearly feel that everything comes through us, even though we don’t know this ourselves. We don’t feel it and don’t understand why it is happening this way. However, the time has come for us to begin to be interested in the origins of anti-Semitism, to investigate and understand it, and to scrutinize the cause for its appearance.

Only the wisdom of Kabbalah will help us in this by explaining the source of the Jewish people. This is because this source is not physical. We are not a regular people formed on a genetic basis like all the peoples. Instead, we proceed from a spiritual source, from the origin of unity that connects and unites everyone together into a single whole.

What must link us is brotherly love, love of others as ourselves, which doesn’t exist in our world. All this belongs to the spiritual level, to a spiritual source, that we must again attain.

You can argue about this and disagree. However, come; let’s sit down and begin to study this question, to scrutinize and investigate in order to discover the truth. Otherwise, we will have no chance of understanding what is happening with the world and with us, with our people.

How could it be possible to establish the nation of Israel, establish what its borders are, and the system in which the people of Israel will live if we don’t know what this people is, what kind of network of national, sociological, and social links must be constructed for it?

We have built the nation of Israel according to the same pattern upon which every other nation in the world has been built, and clearly this is not appropriate for us! We see that this is a sick nation. Everything that happens here is an unhealthy phenomena. We have built this nation according to the examples that we have taken from the nations of the world, according to the laws that are found at the basis of other nations that are more or less similar to each other.

According to these laws of the nations of the world, we have established a nation for ourselves, and we called it “Israel.” However, this is not the nation of Israel and not the people of Israel if it lives in a system like this! We have crammed the people of Israel into this template, into a matrix that is designed for the nations of the world, and it cannot exist in this form.

We have gathered a multitude of people from the ends of the earth into this area and have begun to link them, to insert them into a framework borrowed from the nations of the world, but this is not at all appropriate for the people of Israel. So, until today, we have existed only through the kindness of the higher power.
[141934]
From the program “A New Life” 8/14/14

Related Material:
What Is Happening To Us?
Anti-Semitism As A Demand For Attention And Love
The Nobel Prize Is Not The “Light To The Nations”

Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 08.31.14

Workshop

[media 1] [media 2]

Writings of Rabash  “Dargot HaSulam,” Article 217

[media 3] [media 4]

The Book of Zohar — Introduction: “The Vision of Rabbi Hiya,” Item 50

[media 5] [media 6]

Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 3, Part 9 “Histaklut Pnimit,” Item 4

[media 7] [media 8]

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose” Title: “Two Paths: A Path of  Pain and a Path of Torah”

[media 9] [media 10]