The Fundamental Difference Of Today’s Reality

Dr. Michael LaitmanA question I received: Many people in the world now suffer from depression; they don’t leave their homes for months, and require psychological help. What can help them?

My Answer: Depression is the most common illness in the world today. Only one remedy can be advised for it: the Light that Reforms. No psychologist can help in this regard for it is due to the Creator being revealed to us in the opposite form that is prompting rampant depression.

Once each of us felt that he or she was one little person around which the world was revealed in different layers of our egoism: 1, 2, 3. As our ego grew bigger and bigger, we developed in accordance with it by creating a new environment: a world of new technology and social relations. This is how we developed over the course of our entire history, stage by stage, 1 – 2 – 3, toward wealth, honor, and knowledge.

However, today we have come to the fourth level, which is a special one. At this level, what is becoming revealed is the Creator, the quality of “bestowal,” and not our developing ego, our property of “receiving.” This is the fundamental difference of our epoch, which is the epoch of revealing the Creator.

Previously, nature (the Creator) forced us to develop, that is, to grow and become smarter, more knowledgeable, understanding, and powerful. But now human beings have completed their development at the level of this world. People are recognizing the pointlessness of new discoveries, and everything gradually fades, the development of science, space research, and so on. We have completely depleted ourselves.

Today, in contrast to this, the Creator – a new nature – is revealed. And here we need to proceed in a different manner. We cannot enter a new stage with our egoism; we will only harm ourselves. We need to realize that a completely new approach has begun, and neither our strength, nor advanced technologies and scientific discoveries can help us.

Suddenly we will discover that all the systems that we built in this world have stopped working. All the former goals (money, power, knowledge, family, education, and culture) have lost their value. Darkness and despair are coming into the world, but this is because the Creator, the Force of bestowal is being revealed in it. We don’t want it, since it cancels out our egoism, our nature, and all our desires!

It is like a child who ran around wanting to play, and suddenly he is told “That’s enough. Now you have to give and to love. Go play with your little sister.” This is contrary to his nature, and hence his life becomes dark; he immediately loses all his energy.

Therefore, we can understand why people are sitting around depressed, unable to leave their homes for months at a time. Antidepressants are the most popular medicine today. However, I can advise that the Surrounding Light is the only medicine.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/10, Shamati #16

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The Psychological Change That Turns The World Around

Dr. Michael LaitmanA question I received: Why does Baal HaSulam write that the transition to bestowal is nothing more than a psychological problem? Then what is so difficult about it?

My Answer: The psychological problem consists of beginning to relate to everything that happens to an intentional external influence on you. Afterward, all the worlds will connect together for us. However, for the time being it poses a psychological problem for us.

We need to try to detach slightly from ourselves, as though we are looking at and evaluating ourselves from the side (drunk people sometimes experience a similar sensation of a double vision). We should continuously analyze ourselves and to say that everything that happens in our heart, mind, and life in general is the Creator fulfilling, controlling, and playing with us. "I" is not I, but His game, and I am watching this myself.

I have no other choice. I am completely driven by the inner fulfillment, which He gives me. However, He gave me an additional point from which I could look at myself and say, “Everything you think and everything you feel comes from Him.”

Question (continued): How does one rise above this state?

My Answer: You need to demand from Him to change your nature. The Creator gives you special, external circumstances all the time, and you need to ask Him to change the circumstances within you (your properties) and to bring them into agreement with the external ones (the Creator’s properties).

Suppose we enter a place with particular external circumstances, which we are unable to stand. Usually, in this case we wish to change the environment to suit us. A “psychological change,” however, is understanding that instead of changing external circumstances, we need to change ourselves to match the external circumstances since the externality cannot be changed. We can transform ourselves to resemble the new environment, and then we will feel comfortable in it. This is a psychological change, a new approach to the changes that humanity is going through today.

Even now, like during all times, we wish to change the nature that surrounds us and to arrange the world according to how we understand it. However, we have begun a different program, and this world (the Creator who arranges all this) now demands that we ourselves begin to change in the direction of the Creator.

New circumstances emerge around me: Darkness comes into the world, everything contracts, becomes more confusing, unclear, and scary. But rather than asking to change the world around me, I need to ask to change me.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/28/10, Shamati #16

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