Audio Version Of The Blog – 12.19.15

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A Brass Serpent: A Symbol Of Idolatry

Laitman_115_06The Torah, “Numbers,” 21:7 – 21:9: And the people came to Moses, and said:”We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that He take away the serpents from us.” And Moses prayed for the people.

And the LORD said unto Moses: “Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he seeth it, shall live.”

And Moses made a serpent of brass, and set it upon the pole; and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked unto the serpent of brass, he lived.

A brass serpent is a symbol of what is depicted to a person by his egoistic idol. The Torah seems to tell us to realize, “look, it is simply made of brass, why do you bow to it?” Therefore, if you “see the serpent” now, which means if you feel it inside you on that level, it heals you.

From his height, from the height of Bina, Moses makes a serpent on the level of the still nature as it actually is and not the way it is depicted to a person. We think that this serpent provides the infinite pleasure one can feel on earth, in our world and in the spiritual world, everywhere. This means that instead of the Creator, we see a serpent.

Moses’ serpent seems to say that the ego is merely an idol. And so whoever sees it as still nature that is on a pole immediately heals since he realizes that there is no reason to pray to an idol.

Question: What does it mean to “set it upon a pole?”

Answer: It means that even in the form of still nature the serpent is held only thanks to the pole that symbolizes faith. The serpent is basically a person’s force of motion. We advance with it because if the ego disappeared, we would remain on level zero.

Comment: But until now Moses advanced with a rod without a serpent…

Answer: It is because a rod on the level of Moses is Bina. If the serpent sits on Bina, we see that it is a piece of brass from which a person can make an idol, which means nothing! In other words, if we look at our ego through the point in the heart, we begin to realize that it isn’t worth spending our whole life on it.

You can write whole novels about the serpent because it is our sophisticated ego, a cunning beast that is close to man. It always appears as an evil, cunning figure and a cause of alert in all the folk tales. Man has an instinctive fear of serpents and isn’t afraid of anything in the same way that stems from the spiritual roots of the ego.

We can use the ego in two ways: on the one hand, the serpent’s venom is a medicine, that a person’s health depends on, and on the other hand, it is death. Not every venom is a medicine.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 7/1/15

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Go Find Out

Laitman_115Question: Did your teacher Rabash tell you about the meaning of life right away when you came to him?

Answer: I wish he had explained it to me that way… When I first came to my teacher I asked him after two or three lessons whether I was in the right place in order to attain the meaning of life. I had searched in many places before that and so I wanted to know whether I should spend my whole life studying with him.

His answer was very simple: “Go find out. I am not keeping you and not driving you away, but you should know that you have to check and find out that you are really in the right place.”

He did not try to convince me that I was in the right place to fill my body and soul since I wouldn’t have believed him anyway. This is the reason he said: “Go find out!”

This is what made me understand that I really was in the right place, where I was not being deceived and I was actually being taught the method of attaining spirituality. Later on I discovered it myself and could check whether it was indeed so or not. This is the wisdom of Kabbalah, it gives you tools but all the rest is up to you.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 10/25/15

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What Does The Soul Remember?

laitman_934Question: Why doesn’t the soul remember the experience of previous lives?

Answer: Because it has nothing to do with physical life. The soul is what we invest in others, when we are found with them and feel our eternal state through them, still in this world, in this life, in this body.

The structure of the soul is composed of ten Sefirot. We must know how to assemble and give life to this system so that all parts of the soul will complement each other mutually. For example, if ten people gather together and want to create mutual relationships like these, they can dissolve into each other, and each one of them can go out of himself and not remain a little egoist.

When I go out of myself into my nine friends and each one of them does this too, a network of connections is organized between us and we begin to feel that we are within it.This is the feeling of crossing the Machsom (barrier). Within me I am an egoist, but when I am included within them, I am an altruist, and then the common desire and intention that we create between us is called the soul.

The network of our mutual relationships with the characteristic of bestowal is called the “Kli of the soul,” and the particular form of the upper Light that is revealed within it is called the Creator.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 11/1/15

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“More” ‑ No Longer Works

laitman_273_01Opinion (Daily Reckoning, Bill Bonner): “The San Francisco Federal Reserve bank came out with a gloomy forecast last month. Its analysts said that stocks were likely to earn paltry returns over the next 10 years. The reason cited was simple enough; stockholders don’t live forever.

“‘Demography is destiny,’ said Auguste Comte. ‘It works the other way around too,’ he might have added. If they thought they were going to live longer, America’s most ubiquitous age cohort — the baby boomers — might continue to buy stocks. Instead, the cold hand of the grave is on their shoulders and on the whole economy. The boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000 per day over the next 18 years. They will sell stocks to finance their remaining years.

“Old people have always been a drag on an economy. Migrating tribes left them behind. Eskimos put them out on the ice. Old people generally bowed to their fate with good grace. In times of famine, for example, they stopped eating so the young might live.

“Mortality has doomed the stock market, says the S.F. Fed. P/E ratios will likely be cut in half. Investors are unlikely to see their stocks return to 2010 levels, says the report, until 2027. And this assumes that US companies will continue to grow profits as they did since 1954. Not very likely. Because democracy, energy, and financial quackery are destiny too. Jointly and severally, they are responsible for the biggest financial debacle in history. …

“But what would you expect? Everything droops. For the last 3 or 4 centuries the winning formula for developed economies and their governments has been simple: More energy. More output. More people. More credit. More promises. This formula has been so effective for so long people began to think it was destiny itself. It’s not. Instead, it is slave to destiny not its master.

“By 2007, the slave was put in his place. The business cycle turned sour. Native populations in Europe and Japan are falling. Energy use per person in the developed world has leveled off. Private sector credit is shrinking. So is real private sector output.

“The feds responded to this challenge as they had to every post-WWII slowdown. They added more — more money, more credit. The government itself spent more money and used more energy. But the economy did not react in the old manner.

“An obvious reason: people are no longer as young and sans-soucis as they used to be. A young man’s eye may be drawn to fast German cars or slick Italian suits. But an old man can barely see at all. The baby boomers no longer roll their joints; they rub them. And they are no longer the source of an economic boom; now, they are the proximate cause of the bust.

“But there’s more to this new Grey Age than demography. People too are subject to the law of declining marginal utility. They wear out. But so do even the most enduring and impressive economic trends. There were only 450 million people on the planet in 1500. It took 99,000 years to reach that level. Then, over the next 5 centuries — the population soared 10 times. Today, it is hard to find a parking place in any major city. How was such a big jump in population possible? Destiny was demography. With ready, cheap energy at hand, man could grow more food. And then he could ship it all around the world. And he could put his talents to work making more and better machines…which would vastly increase his output and his standard of living. …

“Yes, there is plenty of energy around. But it is net output that you get from energy that counts, not the raw output. If a gallon of gasoline costs $5…it must produce more than $5 in additional output or the economy gets poorer. As the price rises fewer and fewer new energy apps pay off.

“Likewise, credit is subject to the law of declining marginal utility too. In 1950, an additional dollar of credit added about 70 cents to GDP. By 2007, the US economy was adding more than $5 of debt to produce a single new dollar’s worth of GDP. Now, the feds’ new credit inputs produce negative real returns.

“The jig is up. More no longer works. …”

My Comment: So, we have to acknowledge the law of Kabbalah—humanity evolves within its egoism, which has ripened, and now has over-ripened and requires replacement. This is the natural way of the development of humanity, “the path of suffering” as it is called in the wisdom of Kabbalah.

But there is also another way, informed managed development, “the path of Torah—Light,” when, developing under the influence of the Upper Light, we change in the right direction more rapidly than nature compels us. And so ahead of the force of nature that compels us to evolve, we feel we are constantly on the rise, developing painlessly, quickly, seeing the future.
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