Question: What does it mean, “to rise above egoism?” How do you do it: through thoughts?

Answer: To rise means to work with your egoism in a sensible manner. When you are under the influence of society and the society seems to be to your right, while egoism is to the left, you become close to the society and merge with it as you invest yourself in it as much as you can and treat egoism as matter that you must use in order to make a person, to give it a human form.

This is the difference between our method and all the other methods, which are based on the destruction and suppression of egoism, its maximum concealment, leveling. But not here! Here it is easily revealed. And since it is one of the two forces of nature, as I reveal the second force, I begin to see in an absolutely objective manner how both forces can be used, and neither applies to me!

Today I identify myself with my egoism; I exist in it inseparably. But here I sort of come out of it and regard my body, myself, and those around me objectively; I separate every person from their inner egoistic essence. In this way, I start seeing people, not necessarily in their egoistic matter, but outside of their egoistic matter, outside of their egoism, outside of matter, the way they should be if they were to properly use these two forces, the right and the left. The left force is egoism, and the right is the surrounding environment, which demonstrates altruistic qualities to me that are opposite to egoism.

Question: I do not fully understand, what is the right line?

Answer: The right line is power. It is the idea that I need to transform my left line: all my egoistic desires, intentions, everything there is. Let us say I have 600 or 800 of them, it does not matter whatever number becomes revealed, even 10 or 20 different desires and thoughts. Under the influence of the society and the environment, I must transform all my egoistic qualities, desires, and thoughts, which are my egoistic heart and mind, into their opposite: altruistic. It is like putting an altruistic shirt over egoism.

Question: Let us use an example to make it clear. Let us say that I have a new desire to sing. I like singing, but I am bad at it.

Answer: This is not egoism. Egoism is when you wish to use something, which will hurt others and will supposedly benefit you. But even if we use the singing example, if you were to sing in front of your mother who loves you, your singing would please her, despite the quality of your voice and your ability to carry a tune. If you were to sing outside, people might not be very pleased to hear you. Thus everything depends on the degree of participation, love, and connection between you and your listeners.

Question: How do you turn an egoistic action into its opposite?

Answer: Introduce love in the connection between us.

Imagine a scientist, for example, a doctor that operated on a person who had a problem with his voice, and the surgeon gave the patient the ability to speak. Now, this person, completely out of tune and wheezing, sings. Imagine what pleasure the doctor is experiencing hearing the results of his work!

Here everything depends on the connection between the people, and not the correct reproduction. If your actions are making others happy, go ahead do it. All the doors are open before you.

The main thing is to have a proper connection with others when you perceive each other with love. Then your new relationship is in charge. You begin to perfectly and instinctively understand which qualities you can use. Just as before you wanted to instinctively and openly use egoism for your benefit, now you openly and sincerely use it in the opposite direction.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #7, 12/14/11

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Question: What is the meaning of “revealing the design of nature”: Does a person see, hear, or feel something?

Answer: As man becomes similar to the surrounding nature, he begins to treat it in a positive manner and to understand its design, feelings, and thought. He begins to see that nature, which created everyone including him, man who possesses a higher mind and feeling.

By the way, many speak about this, people who are close to nature, who grew up and developed in it, for example the Bedouins in Israel who live in the desert. They perceive nature, its breath.

I have spoken with many people, who have spent many years in the desert, the tundra, and the jungle with apes. They told me of amazing sensations, when the perception of nature, its design, and its mind suddenly begin to communicate with the person, and he begins to perceive that he exists inside mother nature, inside an enormous wise system. He suddenly begins to speak, communicate with it, reveal its matrix, its plan, and identify with it, and a certain union between man and nature appears which raises him to the next level of development.

The understanding of the common design of nature and the ascent to its next level, the level of controlling our own lives, is the purpose of the modern stage of development.

Question: In other words, we see certain new relationships and they become more obvious, more natural. But nature itself remains the same? Or does it also change?

Answer: I am not speaking about the still, vegetative, and animate nature. I am speaking about nature, which bares itself before man, reveals itself, and he discovers a certain enormous common universal feeling, mind, and design. Man reveals this.

When he connects to this, he begins to feel that he is on the next level of development. In other words he gains the understanding of all processes, the view of the world from beginning to end, its design: Why our Universe developed, where it came from, what there was before the Big Bang, what happened after (since our Universe has obviously existed for a certain amount of time), and the perception of the Universe, how we perceive it outside of our five physical senses, through a universal mind, a higher heart and mind. As man attains this, he begins to understand that his entire lengthy historic process of development was in order to reach this level.

Many sciences speak of this. Terminal problems, which appear in every science come from the fact that further development of sciences is directed specifically in this area. Consequently, scientists will not be able to reveal anything without upbringing, without being transformed through an integrated relationship with nature. This is why all our sciences are in a crisis.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #7, 12/14/11

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Opinion: (Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of RIMCO, a global investment management firm): “The year 2012 is Europe’s moment of truth. If their dithering continues, European politicians will soon lose control of the continent’s economic and financial future. After all the excitement of 2011, it is also a make-or-break year for some Middle Eastern countries in the midst of tricky political transitions. Even the United States is being shaken out of its social slumber as concerns mount about income inequality and, more generally, the fairness of the ‘system.’

“In an attempt to shed light on the key issues in play, what follows is an attempt to identify four factors that could wreck the global economy in the next few years, and four factors that could propel it to greater stability and prosperity. Let’s hope our leaders choose wisely.

“European economic and financial fragmentation: As of today, the biggest risk for the global economy this year is the disorderly collapse of the eurozone. It would bring economic and financial activity to a standstill across the continent, cause widespread corporate bankruptcies and bank runs, and destroy millions of jobs. …A complete eurozone collapse would be both chaotic and an unmitigated disaster.

“Disruptions in the Middle East: The greater the instability in these two countries [Iran and Syria], the higher the risk of regional contamination and, accordingly, worrisome global repercussions. This could include surging oil prices, leading to an ugly global stagflation.

“Central bank exhaustion: Unconventional measures by central banks have, up to now, played a critical role in avoiding debt deflation and economic recessions in advanced economies. In the process, the banks have ballooned their balance sheets to previously unthinkable levels (from 20 percent of GDP for Britain and the United States to 30 percent for the European Central Bank).

“Social unrest: Enabled by social media technologies that facilitate broad-based coordination, the world has witnessed an astonishing outburst of grassroots social movements that are pressing for greater social justice… Having come together on the basis of legitimate grievances, these movements now face the challenge of pivoting from complaints about the past to helping to build a better future. The longer it takes the pivot, the higher the probability of frustration and of the protests turning violent — and governments reacting inappropriately.”

My Comment: Everything is correct except for the reason for the crisis and its only possible resolution that stems from its cause.
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Today we need to prepare people for the new world the same way that we prepare kids for our world. We should realize that we have to play against our egoism in the same way a little child plays. We are required to artificially evoke this new world in our imagination.

Obviously, we’re deceiving ourselves in this way. Yes, I lie to myself because my egoistic nature forces me to snatch for myself anything I can lay my hands on. But I must be different because otherwise I will not rise to the next level, the level of an integral human being, Adam. I can only rise to it with the help of my environment, which I myself need to create.

So it follows that ultimately I have to examine: “What exactly is this new type of humanity? What can bring me to it? What sort of environment, influence, can shape me into anything? How can I create this environment for myself so that I will change?”

It turns out that, in a way, I elevate myself. I grow through that. In the process I become aware of all the forces of nature that I need to change and use in order to change myself.

By building this new society, a person reaches the highest level of nature. I begin to attain the entire mechanism of my development and understand the full depth of the engine that works in the evolutionary process. I step onto the level of the creator who alters one’s own self.

Can you only imagine what a superb psychologist a person becomes for himself! This is why I believe that this science is the most necessary one in our current state.

From this it becomes clear that we need to teach people about psychology of an individual human being and of society, about freedom of will, and to tell them about the forces that act on us and through which we can influence ourselves. In other words, we ourselves are building the society that is going to change us.

We should study and examine ourselves very well, our inner qualities, both personal and social, through all kinds of connections based on mentalities, habits, and lifestyles. And accordingly, we have to build an integral external influence on humanity as a whole and on each of its civilizations, nations, cultures, and so on.

This is an enormous undertaking, but it is the work of making a true human out of us, and therefore this is noble work. We will create a human being from an animal.

The task we are facing is enormous. The efforts of a tremendous amount of people are required here, and first and foremost of those who are testing all these processes on themselves, who study them, raise objections, discuss, and simultaneously attempt to do something. All of humanity should participate in this, absolutely everyone, young and old! Every person needs to be engaged in this process for a very long time.

If we desire to rise to the next level of our development, the level of the integral image of “Adam,” we need to give ourselves to this pursuit completely and to tend to our beastly, physical state only to whatever extent is actually necessary so that this animal could exist comfortably and not interfere with our creation of Adam out of ourselves.

This shows us why the current condition of humanity is leading us towards that against our will, as well as the reason for the crisis and the enormous amount of the unemployed.

Before long armies of billions of the unemployed will appear and as a result, only the most necessary enterprises such as manufacturing of foodstuffs, clothes, construction, and so on will remain, and only to the extent and quantity required for a normal existence. Only a certain number of people will work in these enterprises, or perhaps everyone a little bit of time. But all of them, regardless of whether they’re working or free from work, will have to pursue integral education.

With that humanity is freeing tremendous egoistic resources that previously were busy manufacturing unnecessary things. They will all be gradually transitioned precisely towards building the next stage: the creation of an integral society.

We won’t be able to avoid it. We need to progressively make our way towards this because only movement in that direction will smooth out our current threatening state, which leads us toward a world war.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #6, 12/14/11

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Shamati #159, “And It Came to Pass in the Course of those Many Days”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “A Prayer for the Poor,” Item 189, Lesson 54
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 6, Item 24, Lesson 16
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Lesson Topic: Kabbalah Learning
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Question: Should we get rid of all our corporeal desires in order to reach the level of the “poor man?”

Answer: We shouldn’t get rid of any desire. We should only ask for correction, and nothing more. The upper Light knows what to do better than we do. I don’t have to get rid of anything. Even if I see my worst attributes, I mustn’t get rid of them because it’s as if I would be cutting off my arms and legs. I don’t correct myself; it’s the Light that should correct me.

If I come to you, and attack you, shout at you, and insult you, I mustn’t “shut myself up.” I have to pray for the upper Light to perform this correction because that will be a real correction and not something that is done under pressure. This is a huge difference.

Baal HaSulam says that if you suppress something by that you are destroying this part in the world, and due to that the world will never be corrected. It will require much more effort to bring it back to the way it was and to correct it.

Similarly, we sometimes use medicines in order to suppress an illness and to conceal it inside, and this is even worse than if an illness is seen clearly and thus can be cured. This is how a snake operates: It hides inside and you don’t see it, but then it crawls out.

Therefore our attitude to transgressions, to quarrels between people and to different conflicts is totally different: Let them be as they are, yet above them we should build the correction because now is the best time to correct them.

If a person wants to cover up the negative revelations and to hide them, it’s the worst thing. There are people who are afraid of quarrels and conflicts, they are afraid of such revelations, and it’s bad because that isn’t aimed at correction.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/2/12, The Zohar

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Complete Transcript of the Introductory Lecture: “The Arvut – Mutual Guarantee”

We are going through some very rough times in the life of our country. The problem is that today people around the world, not just people in our country, do not know how to solve the problems that have risen. But the solution suddenly comes in the form of the people; this happens in different countries, and now we can observe this in Israel.

We do not yet know whether this is an epidemic of some sort or on the contrary, a certain good wave, which will bring the world to order. But people, living in different places around the globe, feel the urge to go outside and express their wishes and hopes.

This happens because for a very long time now, almost sixty years, there has been a tendency around the world, which points to the supposed end of our entire history: The world is becoming submerged in crises, which manifests in every area of people’s lives.

People are no longer able to create a normal family; this leads to the multitude of divorces, children not able to live with their parents, leave their parents’ homes early, and use drugs and alcohol. But the crisis does not only manifest in the family unit, it encompasses society, industry, economy, the education system, culture, and even science. Scientists themselves are stating that science has come to a dead end and cannot develop further. We really seem to have hit a wall.

Over the course of thousands of years, we developed from one generation to another with the assumption that our children will have a better life. We suffered, as it were, for our children in hope they would be happy. Our love for them forced us to develop and work hard sacrificing ourselves. But now none of this exists; today we are no longer convinced that they will have a better life than we did. This is why people no longer want to have and raise children: Who needs it and why? What will this unfortunate child be born for, to see this complicated and meaningless life?

And the understanding of the fact that there is no meaning or purpose to it literally penetrates our brain. We do not see a solution; we cannot find an answer. It is as if mankind were suffocating in their inability to somehow move. And the entire world feels this.

But the main thing is the financial and economic crisis because the common crisis manifests in it. After all, economy connects the entire world into a single net. Industrial, commercial, and interbank relations: These are the imprints of our desires and aspirations. In other words, our relationships are essentially measured with money. What can you do? Such is the world. This is why a crisis in economy is a special sign.

At the same time we reveal that our world has become small. Literally within 24 hours, a person can find himself in the most remote place without feeling much of a difference besides for the mentality of the people, which he can gradually become accustomed to. Things are approximately the same everywhere, everyone is connected with one another; people seem to lose their individuality. Besides the fact that the world has become small, all of its parts ended up being tightly connected with one another. And that led to special results: We saw that we depend on one another. For example, when something happens somewhere in Japan, the entire world suffers. And the same is true of the US, Europe, and any other place.

Everyone mutually affects one another. We cannot even imagine what would happen if the US were to declare fiscal default. And in general, can we even wrap our minds around it? The Common Market could fall apart in Europe, and this would naturally affect the entire world. Briefly speaking, we live in an unpredictable world, and on one hand, this causes pressure in society, but on the other hand, people are becoming indifferent towards whatever is happening, since they are not able to change anything anyway.

This indifference comes from the same connection that exists between all of us, because we all depend a lot on one another. But we did not build these connections; simply, the world has suddenly closed in on us. It was separated into a multitude of pieces, and suddenly it became closed in, suddenly we have become like a unified mankind on the globe, one family, and we depend on one another. This is a very big problem.

Today scientists, who study human nature, political and social scientists, already clearly see that we really exist in mutual total dependence to such an extent that no one can escape it. Scientists already started coming to these conclusions in their studies 50-60 years ago. But only recently every one of us started to actually experience it.

[Read more →]

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Opinion (Stanley Fischer, Governor of the Bank of Israel): [Dr. Laitman’s comments are in bold.]

“The International Monetary Fund predicts 3.3% growth in the global economy this year, and when I was at the IMF ten years ago we considered 3.5% growth in the global economy as the borderline between normal growth and recession. We are on the brink of a global recession.”

My Comment: We have been talking about the crisis for years; there is nothing new. It speaks only of shortsightedness.

“The big question is whether there will be a recession in Europe or whether we are facing a financial crisis. If there is a financial crisis in Europe, then so many things could happen such as Greece going bankrupt, or actually leaving the euro bloc with other countries following after. It’s hard to know.”

My Comment: The crisis will be financial; so be prepared for the worst because today none of the “decision makers” thinks about the transition towards an integral economy.

“The good part of the story is that they realize that they too don’t know what will happen to them if they keep the current framework. I was certain when I returned from the IMF Annual Meeting that the situation was difficult and bad, and they that didn’t understand what was happening there. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank has taken creative steps to deal with the liquidity and debt problem. There’s an improvement, but there is still uncertainty.”

My Comment: They will do nothing and will be able to do nothing, as has been the case in recent years due to lack of understanding of the trend of human development.

“Yossi Bachar [Israel Discount Bank Chairman] wants to send me messages, and finds it more convenient to use this stage. That’s fine. He wants to tell me that the capital adequacy ratio must not be raised. So I say to him: The Bank of Israel must not avoid raising it. There is the question of the rate of increase; we are aware of the problem, and I’m not fond of the expression ‘choking credit’, because that creates an unpleasant feeling, as though I’m strangling something, and I find that distasteful. We are aware of the problem.”

My Comment: This might be possible for a different small country, but not for Israel because it has the method of correction of the world, and without its interference the world will continue to slide down towards a Nazi regime and a world war.

“I respect Judaism, but this must change, the situation in which the Haredim [ultra-orthodox Jews], the fastest growing section of the population, does not participate in the workforce. Fewer than 40% of them work. This cannot continue, and it must be stopped. If it continues in the long term, it will be very hard for the economy to provide what people expect: life at a respectable standard.”

My Comment: If they enter the market now, you will get another half a million unemployed people, which will cost much more than today. We need to restrict various “political” subsidies instead of inviting them to the labor market.
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Not by chance is human society becoming more compressed, closed, and homogeneous. Apparently, this is a natural process programmed in our development. We can observe this from aside, study, and analyze it, but this is a fact. It does not matter whether we like it or not, but there is a certain process of development of our nature that we must undergo, and these forms must be revealed.

Therefore, we have no choice, and obviously, we have to build a more connected, friendly, warm society, based on mutual support and participation. All the ancient sources, religions, and beliefs say that in the end, we have to come to love.

People who live in nature, far away from people, say the same thing. They feel love coming from nature and its concern about everything that is contained in it. And we, relating to each other egoistically, looking through our own egoistic perspective, do not notice this love.

I once talked with Jane Goodall who lived in the jungle for about 17 years among chimpanzees; she received the Nobel Prize for her research. I asked her what the most important thing she learned from the feeling of living among the chimpanzees in the jungle where there were no other humans, and if they were ready to accept her as one of their own. And she replied: “Love, this is what I felt among them. Although they are always trying to sort out problems and seem to shout, but this is only to awaken love. And I began to discover the same thing in the trees, forest, sky, earth ….”

Dr. Jane Goodall and Dr. Michael Laitman, Arosa Forum, Switzwerland

She made such a discovery even though she does not have a sentimental character. A person, who arrived from a U.S. concrete jungle and lived for so many years in the jungle, slowly revealed that the whole nature is filled with love.

And here we really are facing a huge problem. All religions, beliefs, and various spiritual practices speak with one voice that a human being must achieve universal unity, if not love, at least good relations, without which humanity simply cannot continue to exist.

To do that, we go through this process in order to feel the need, to want to come to love, to develop new relationships. It is impossible to force one to love! I can pay money to buy anything except love. It is possible to purchase a polite attitude for money, but love is a very special feeling, separate from all other human emotions!

For example, I feel that you have become important for me because through you I learn, understand, and attain something new in life. You become dear to me as much as the subject that I want to get with your help. Thus, a good relationship is built between us.

We may enter into such relations with each other when we need to establish trust. Because I need you and you need me, there is trust between us, to the extent that I can rely on you. But if suddenly someone comes who will pay more and bring you more content and pleasure, all your trust and loyalty disappear.

That is why, we now find ourselves in an unusual situation. Our development has led us to feel that we depend on each other and are required to establish good relationships with each other, to the extent that we should love one another! Otherwise, we will not have the correct trust that is needed to achieve a good life today.
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From Kab TV’s “A New Life” Episode #6, 1/3/12

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