Audio Version Of The Blog – 12.05.14

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Convention Association “Day One” – 12.05.14

Convention Association, “Day One,” Lesson 1 

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Convention Association, “Day One,” Lesson 2

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Convention Association, “Day One,” Lesson 3 

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Returning To The Origin

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Book of Zohar, Devarim (Deuteronomy), 32: The sons of Ishmael will possess the Holy Land, where she will be empty for many years. They will obstruct the children of Israel, returning to their land.

Question: The first sign of the Messiah’s arrival is the return of the Jews’ to their country. Does it happen at this time?

Answer: I think that currently we are experiencing a reverse process. The process of segregation of the people of Israel from the land of Israel is ongoing. The number of people leaving this land is greater than those who return. Moreover, the people who come to this country do so involuntarily, whereas those who leave, do so out of their freewill. I look at this process very soberly.

Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin, Folio 98-a: R. Abba also said: There can be no more manifest (sign of) redemption than the one written in the Prophet Yehezkel’s (Ezekiel) Book (36:8): O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to my people of Israel, for they are at hand to come.

This excerpt is about the fact that people are being attracted by the notion of Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel). “Eretz” is derived from the word “Ratzon” (desire); “Israel” stems from “Yashar-Kel” (directly to the Creator).

It means that the aspiration to the Creator, the force that defines each moment of our life and constantly animates and directs us, prevails in all of our desires. Thus, it becomes very clear that the Creator is the general and governing force of nature. In every moment of our life, it shapes us, our surroundings, and the world in which we live.

This force establishes relationships that help us understand our purpose: Where do we come from, what is the essence of our existence, and for what reason are we here? We start realizing that the chain of circumstances, conditions, timing, and everything that ever happens to us and/or that takes place in the world we live in has the upper thought behind it.

This is what is meant by the return to Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel), meaning to the desire that is oriented towards the Creator, to the revelation of the upper force. In this case, the governing force shows up in us as the Messiah (Mashiach) from the word “Moshech” (pulling out). This is the power that pulls us from the inanimate, vegetative, and animate levels to a state called Man (Adam), the sensation of the Messiah.

Question: What does it mean “and yield your fruit to my people of Israel”?

Answer: Under the fruit means the desire (Ratzon) that rise from the Land (Eretz).These desires lead the nation to authentic, eternal, perfect fruit, meaning attaining the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Will the Messiah Come?” 11/14/14

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Esau and Jacob: A Battle for Leadership

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The Torah says that Jacob followed his mother’s advice and pretended he was his brother Esau. By that, he deceitfully received Isaac’s blessing. What is this story about?

Answer: Isaac represents the left line. Esau and Jacob stand for two lines that derive from him. Neither one of them can exist without the other.

Jacob was the one who was meant to receive the blessing, since he was chosen to define and execute the entire process of correction. He is the one who provided everything to achieve the corrected state at the end of the process.

However, Isaac gave birth to Esau because it is absolutely impossible to advance without his line. In essence, Esau’s line is the line of desire, emptiness, a need and a demand to be fulfilled. In other words, Esau signifies a sensation of emptiness, suffering, and pursuit.

That’s why Esau went to the fields (field of life), which stands for the foundation of human existence in the capacity of a relatively free subject. Without this basis, human life has no meaning whatsoever. Without the quality named Esau, one cannot transition to a state called Adam (Man), and so remains at the animate level. This explains why Esau was Isaac’s firstborn to whom he was supposed to transfer everything he had.

Conversely, for Isaac’s wife Rivkah, it was not so because the program of creation was originally inherent in Jacob, not in Esau. In essence, Jacob is not Isaac’s descendant, rather he is Abraham’s. He is Isaac’s son, but not his firstborn.

This arrangement vividly demonstrates that the program of creation is an auxiliary factor, whereas the matter of creation is the basic thing. The same applies to nature. Even though Israel (“a head for me” – לי ראש) is the head of humanity, still humanity is the basic material of the desire that has to lead to unity, to adhesion with the Creator.

Question: Does it mean that Esau (an empty desire that requires fulfillment) represents the contemporary world?

Answer: The darkest and strongest forces have to be converted into the lighter ones. The Jewish people are obligated to bring the masses to merging with the Creator. The Creator is waiting for Esau, whereas Jacob is assigned to fulfill his role.

It’s a battle for leadership, for which of them is more important. It’s about splitting the functions and identifying what type of connection with the Creator each of them bears. The combat continues until the very last state, at which time the competition between them turns into connecting and replenishing one another. Egoism cannot achieve this result on its own.

In fact, Jacob didn’t really understand why he was involved in this hassle. He was a mama’s boy; he didn’t have immense desires, nor bottomless needs as did Esau. On the other hand, Esau is huge, strong, and mighty, but at the same time he is unhappy and empty. We have to understand his unenviable role. If we look at miserable, unhappy, suffering humanity that earns billions of dollars without any clue of what to do with it, it’s quite hard to envy them. Esau stands for the general masses that have to be brought to order.

Esau demands an answer from Jacob. The foremost anti-Semites, such as Henry Ford, understood this fact and wrote about it. Nevertheless, the Jews still want to escape to America and assimilate there. They do whatever is possible not to be identified as Jews.

Question: Jacob also made slight efforts to resist his mission, but his mother forced him to pursue it. In fact, who is “the mother”? Who pushes the Jewish people to act as Jacob?

Answer: Mother is a property of Bina. It’s a quality of bestowal and love that clearly realizes that otherwise it will never be implemented on the scale of all humanity.

This particular mother has two children, both of whom were born from love called Bina. They are only divided for the purpose of showing humanity the way to unite the properties of Esau and the qualities of Jacob, and demonstrate to humanity how to correctly direct these qualities. The property called Jacob has to cover Esau’s qualities with intention. If it happens, everything will work out well.

In general, neither of the brothers can be blamed for anything. Only by acquiring genuine freedom of will can we implement it into life. I would say that currently we are going through this state. Although it’s not current per se, rather, it started in the Ari’s time, in the 16th century.

Nevertheless, we are quite tardy. Look at what’s going on in the world! We have to fulfill Jacob’s mission as soon as possible. Otherwise, Esau will press on us even stronger. The most essential thing is to realize that it is us who trigger the pressure by doing nothing.
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From KabTV’s “Weekly Torah Portion” 11/14/14

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Who Is A Kabbalist?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why do Kabbalists maintain that the wisdom of Kabbalah is a science, which means that it is a study based on facts and evidence?

Answer: A Kabbalist doesn’t change external conditions like a scientist does, but rather changes his internal attributes and studies the internally changing perception of the world.

A scientist studies the still, vegetative, and animate nature while a Kabbalist studies nature on the level of a human being, Adam, stemming from the Hebrew word “Domeh” – to resemble the Creator, as it said that the Creator created man in his image and in His likeness.

Therefore, when we study man as the wisdom of Kabbalah suggests, we learn about the Creator by studying about ourselves, and as a result we change ourselves until we become like Him.

Thus we attain the thought, the plan and the ultimate goal of the creation and the world becomes clearer and manageable…
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Ascending Above Time

Dr. Michael LaitmanA person truly fulfills himself when he acquires a new life of bestowal and giving and when he discovers that the force that fills the world is the force of love and bestowal.

Many elderly people discover this at the end of their life, and regret the fact that they cannot identify with this force.

Therefore we have to teach people that a new eternal life is real. Thus, even at a young age, a person will know what to expect and how to make use of time. The right fulfillment of time is necessary in order to bring yourself to a level of existence above time. Time is actually given to us so that we can ascend above it.

This is attained by serving society correctly when a person helps society and society helps him and then the two, man and the society, raise themselves above time.

We must understand that we feel time in our corporeal body, while outside the body, time doesn’t exist. A person has a very subjective inner perception of time since we measure time according to how our body operates: the frequency of our breathing, our heartbeat, and our metabolism, which means according to the life of our corporeal body.

If I detach myself from my physiological body, I can raise myself to another time axis. I no longer perceive the passage of time, but the number of actions that I can perform each time I am in that axis. Then, I am totally independent of time.

It is hard to imagine, but this dimension does exist. Even Einstein said that time is relative. We can say much about time, such as when it ends, when it changes, and how we can stretch or compress it.

Our psychological time totally depends on our corporeal body. If we want to ascend out of this body to the next level, to our spiritual level, to our consciousness, we can detach ourselves from the time of our body.

The body will continue to live, but we will acquire an additional perception of absorbing and extracting, and in the entrances and exits of this system, we will begin to feel life in terms of time that is measured only according to actions of bestowal and receiving and not according to the clock or the orbit of the earth or other celestial objects in space. This has nothing to do with our lives since we are much more complex and sublime than these orbits and cycles that measure time and life.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 4/22/14

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The Kabbalists About The Nation Of Israel And The Nations Of The World, Part 13

Baal HaSulamThe People Of Israel Must Carry Out Their Mission

Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Section 69: But if, God forbid, it is to the contrary, and a person from Israel degrades the virtue of the internality of the Torah and its secrets, which deals with the conduct of our souls and their degrees, and the perception and the tastes of the Mitzvot with regard to the advantage of the externality of the Torah, which deals only with the practical part …by that one dishonors and degrades the internality of the world, which are the children of Israel, and enhances the externality of the world—meaning the nations of the world—over them. They will humiliate and disgrace the children of Israel, and regard Israel as superfluous, as though the world has no need for them, God forbid.

Furthermore, by that, they make even the externality in the nations of the world overpower their own internality, for the worst among the nations of the world, the harmful and the destructors of the world, rise above their internality, which are the righteous of the nations of the world. And then they make all the ruin and the heinous slaughter our generation had witnessed.
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The Impartial Rotation Of The Wheel Of History

Dr. Michael LaitmanMicah, 7:6; Tractate Sotah 49.6: Before the advent of the Messiah …the house of gathering will be the home of debauchery, Galilee will be destroyed in wars …sages will be shamed, those afraid of sin will be despised, and there will be no truth. Righteous will not be able to get along with the falsehearted, and will be forced to retire.  

Before the coming of Messiah …youngsters will be ashamed of the elders and the elderly will rise in front of the young …for a son disgraces his father; a daughter rises up against her mother; a daughter-in-law, against her mother-in-law; a man’s enemies are the members of his household. Gradually, we are approaching this state. We sense it in all spheres of our life; in families, countries, and social structures.

People remain alone with their egoism and the interests of our friends or family members are not taken into account. The state of affairs that we currently experience is called complete darkness.

In the Tractate Sotah, it is said that “the face of the generation will be as the dog’s grin.” In other words, the face of the generation has already acquired a terrible impression of the dusk. That’s why we talk about the darkness that approaches us.

We notice it when we look at our youngsters, we also watch this process looking at ourselves and observing our own changes. We admit that we unconsciously agree with everything that happens around us without having a clue that this kind of attitude turns into a habit.

This state is completely opposite to the one that might bring us closer to the Creator. It’s only a way of demonstrating how much farther we are getting from Him.

Nonetheless, detachment from the Creator or drawing closer to Him is one and the same move, such as a wheel that rotates in a reverse motion, but still takes us forward. The same concept applies here in that I am at the point that is opposite to my goal, but I still continue advancing.

Question: What sensations do people experience when moral, social, and family values are being destroyed?

Answer: We see what’s going on with families, children, divorces, drugs, and relationships.

Big families are rare these days since solid family connections vanish. Detachment of parents from their children and vice versa is a symbol of our time. Spouses cannot live together any longer since they have nothing in common. We do everything to be independent and invent numerous technological novelties that allow us to be completely autonomous.

We think that our home is our castle. However, we cannot rely on our families, nor count on their support just because we are their parts. There is nothing like that anymore. Instead, numerous nursing homes, various hostels, and other places where people remain lonely are very widespread today.

All these are signs of the darkness that is meant to enhance our need for the Messiah’s arrival, which is the force that will pull us out of the state of detachment and bring us to unity.
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From KabTV’s “Will Messiah Come?” 11/14/14

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The Force Of Spiritual Resurrection

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Isaac forbade Jacob to marry any of Canaan’s daughters. Why is it so important not to “mix?” What does it mean?

Answer: According to the general system, Jacob had to descend solely from the middle line. As a result, he had to originate the property of Israel and reach a big state, adulthood (Gadlut), and give birth to the twelve tribes of Israel. In other words, he was the one who had to generate a complete, correct, and balanced system that had to be shaped in a way that could sustain ascents, shattering, and dissolving into Esau, meaning into humankind, and be reborn, thus reviving all of humanity.

Today, we are the ones who have to complete our spiritual resurrection. However, it doesn’t mean that we have to finish self-correction first and only then humanity’s turn will come. Not at all! We are included within humankind. To the degree of our self-correction, and the level of the spiritual revival of every single one of us, the part that corresponds to each of us will instantaneously be altered. So, we progress according to what we must modify in others.

Question: Is it our responsibility to act on the other nations’ territory?

Answer: Yes. We are carrying their correction on our shoulders and they will start helping us as soon as we succeed. Should we start acting correctly, they will immediately join and follow us, and will ask us to tell them what they are supposed to do.
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From KabTV’s “Weekly Torah Portion,” 11/14/14

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Article In The Italian Newspaper Shalom

The Italian newspaper Shalom published my article “Who Are You, People of Israel?”

Shalom

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