Why Are The Guns Roaring?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What can we say to a person who is sitting in the shelter today under the missile attack in the southern part of Israel?

Answer: That he should join the dissemination of our message because this is the only means by which the world will become a better place. Through our message it will receive the “Light,” that is, the force of correction. There is no other way and no other action that will draw the upper reforming force. The wisdom of Kabbalah is based on drawing the Light that Reforms.

Of course, we should provide additional explanations, but on the whole, we should understand that the masses will approach spirituality quite easily. They won’t feel any ups and downs and will have no difficult questions. Unlike us, they don’t have a “plus” and a “minus,” but only a “minus,” emptiness, which is filled by unity. Eventually, they will agree to connect in order to fill themselves.

Thus they can spare themselves of many unpleasant situations on the path and achieve in ten lessons of study what you did in the course of ten years. When you look at their group, you will wonder: “For fifteen years I learned to hate the friends, whereas they love each other after several lessons.”

This is what you will see. After all, you are performing corrections and they are not. They simply learned how to receive pleasure correctly, they caught the right direction: “To connect? Then let’s connect, as long as we receive pleasure.” But you, looking at them from the side, will envy them.

We should refer to scientific research and logically convince a person that we must unite. Then a person will understand the reason for everything that happens—our imbalance with nature—and will agree to connect in order to reach equilibrium with it.

I should have a balanced attitude towards the whole world, including the ecology, the family, the friends,and so on. I have to become the one who bestows, meaning, a well-functioning, corrected part of the whole. It is enough that I agree to move in that direction, and the trend will immediately change. Eventually everything will work out. The clouds will clear and we will see the blue sky, so to speak.

Question: So who should a person connect with?

Answer: With the world, but first, with the group. It isn’t enough to love the world while being detached from it, like the celebrities who tell us on TV: “Who loves you more than I do?” This means that we will have to gather people into groups.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/12/2012, “Introduction to TES

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Healthy Sunbathing Under The Reforming Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What should we focus on while reading The Zohar: the Light or the deficiency?

Answer: What can you do with the Light? We only know that there is a great, perfect force in nature that is good and benevolent to the good and to the bad, that is, to those who want to advance according to its laws and those who do not.

We are actually in a field of Light where the attribute of bestowal is. It is similar to the laws of physics that determine the behavior of any force field, such as electromagnetic or gravitational. In order for this field to influence us most effectively, we should keep its conditions and resemble it. Then, it will operate on us most strongly.

Our sensitivity to this field depends on how much we want to correspond to it. All the still, vegetative, and animate nature move naturally toward the Light, whereas man does not. He needs to determine his attitude to the Light by himself each time, as if to turn himself and place himself under the most suitable and effective influence.

Thanks to the fact that a person turns in different angles with regard to the Light, he studies the Light, gets to know his nature, desire, and the order of his development and its form. He understands why he has to turn himself specifically this way. As a result, the attributes and desires are evoked in him that oblige him to look for the appropriate influence concealed in the Light.

By doing all this work, a person studies creation and the forces that operate in it: the desire to receive and the desire to bestow. There is nothing else besides that. The mind he attains during this process belongs to the upper level, to the Creator. This is because neither the Light nor the desire belong to the upper level, to Godliness.

The mind of the Host who creates and controls everything is what manages both the Light and the vessel. As a result of a person’s turning his vessel each time relative to the Light, he begins to understand creation and to know the mind that is above the vessel and the Light. This is the chance we were given: to attain the acting mind. It is like looking at a table and by that attaining the mind of the carpenter. This is all our work.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/12/2012, The Zohar

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Only A Miracle Will Melt The Stony Heart

Dr. Michael LaitmanOur correction consists of acquiring a “head.” This is the entire difference between the initial Malchut of the world of Infinity from which all the worlds have expanded, and the Malchut of the world of Infinity in its final, third, state to which we return as we complete the correction.

The entire difference is in this head because Malchut of the world of Infinity is completely filled with the Light both in the first and the third state—only the mind is added. A simple desire, which existed before, now operates with intention and makes a calculation about how much it can receive for the sake of bestowal, how much it can give for the sake of bestowal, and whether to not receive at all or to receive egoistically.

From the Creator’s authority all these decisions are passed on to the creature, to man himself. Then, a person acquires an opportunity to please the Creator in the same way that the Creator pleases him, like a guest who accepts the host’s treats. For this reason, he attains the same position, the same degree, as the Creator.

We need to work on our intention on this path, but sometimes it is necessary to separate from the Light, the Creator, the Host, so that His greatness and absolute power that spreads to the entire universe will remain hidden from us, allowing us to keep our independence. Even when I feel free, like a child left home alone by his parents, I still try to behave well, as if the Host were always with me.

And this is despite the fact that my nature constantly resists, conceals the Host from me, and leads in the opposite direction. Everything is made the way it is so that I imagine the Creator before me and thus, study and reveal Him.

This is why our world is called the revelation in concealment, “Megillat Esther (scrolls of Esther).” We begin this work the very first time we begin to feel the desire to understand the meaning of life. From that moment, I remain confused and unable to understand who I am and why I exist, where I am going.

The first thing I need to do here is to calm down and understand that every moment, I am in the best state for advancement. There is an entire system of Partzufim, worlds, Sefirot, and Reshimot (spiritual genes) operating above, and this entire mechanism is only intended to help me. All the worlds are only created for man to constantly provide him with the best state for advancement toward the goal of creation, his perfect state.

The one who accepts this a priori already has a different attitude toward everything that happens to him. Then, he stops complaining and seeing problems everywhere, disagreeing with his states, and everything that happens to him and the world. This only testified to his foolishness and nearsightedness. Now, he begins to search for how, according to what formula, with what attitude, he will be able to derive the maximum benefit from every state for the attainment of the goal.

There are certain conditions set ahead of time that I do not understand because I am unfamiliar with the entire system. This is why we need to accept as given every current state where I have ended up with my desires and thoughts, my heart and mind, and direct it toward the attainment of the goal.

The goal is adhesion with the Creator, the attainment of similarity to Him. This is why I need to try to imagine the Creator in every state and become like Him, take my example from Him like a guest from the host. As it is written: “I to my Beloved, and my Beloved to me.”

One who understands his state, accepts it as given, and correctly directs himself so that “Israel, the Torah, and the Creator are one” advances this way. Then, he finds a mentor, books, the group, and the goal. All this is before him; all the roads are open.

This is a gradual, step-by-step process that ends with a great miracle. We can see the end of all the corrections in it because all corrections are intended for revealing the “stony heart,” the point that separates us from the Creator, called “existence from absence.” We are “absence,” while He exists. We want to overcome this difference, which is called the attainment of adhesion.

However, we discover that it is an abyss that cannot be stepped over, just as one born a woman cannot become a man, and one born black cannot become white or red. We cannot change the qualities we have received from nature.

The biggest difference of all the possible differences is the one between “existence” and “absence.” We reveal this difference in the form of the stony heart, which is corrected through a miracle called Purim.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/9/2012, Writings of Rabash

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Balance On The Level Of Thoughts

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You have defined the modern world order in the following way: “The lack of mutual participation has led us to the loss of a point of reference.” Is this the final outcome?

Answer: This simply is the consequence of our inability to use the two forces: bestowal and reception (which is referred to as lack of mutual participation). This leads to the loss of a point of reference, and we do not understand where we are. The lack of mutual participation means that the force of reception and the force of bestowal within me are not balanced, and this is why I am not able to compromise with anyone.

I do not understand where I am because of my inner lack of balance. This is because I see through my channels of perception, and when they are crooked and not balanced, I see a crooked world and do not understand what is happening with it.

This is obvious in government officials, economists, and bankers who are not able to find the way for our world. And they will not find it! They will do whatever they can to stretch things out and postpone the end as much as possible. In this way, they will keep dropping us into even worse states until millions of people come into the streets and start trouble to the point of a world war, epidemics, and natural cataclysms.

This is about the world of forces, and we possess the highest force in all of nature. As we bring the forces inside us into balance on the human level, the highest level of the entire system, we bring into balance the entire universe, on all the other levels of nature: the animate, vegetative, and still.

This is because we are on the highest degree in power and comprehension. We have the ability to establish balance among the most delicate forces that exist in nature: the power of thought. All the other forces are lower than the power of thought. These are very corporeal forces activated by the power of thought.

This power is not the power of our thoughts, but the thought contained in nature, the common program, the engine that works and spins everything.

So, we are at a special point of our development. Until now, nature was fully ruled over us, and it has brought us to the lowest point of our development. Now, we must rise on our own and acquire the force contained in nature: the force of balance between good and evil, between egoism and the desire to bestow, between the force of reception and the force of bestowal.

If we manage to acquire this instrument that will help us combine these two forces, we will gain power over all of nature before us. After all, we and nature are in the same system, and we are becoming an active element in it, a live, moving, and developing element that gives life force to this entire system.

We can call this force the Light that enlivens this entire system. So it follows that you bring this entire system to life.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11

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Medicine For An Entire Day

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What can a person do while reading The Book of Zohar in order to stay in contact with the group throughout the day?

Answer: You receive some medicine in the morning, an injection. Suppose I have high blood pressure. I take a pill in the morning so that I will feel good the entire day. The pill does its job because it works on the same level: the still, the vegetative, and the animate.

On the other hand, our spiritual development depends on our efforts. My healing depends on my participation. Why? It is because thanks to the healing, from the animate level I attain the level of man.

So, it isn’t enough to get a “pill” in the morning, for example, half an hour before reading The Book of Zohar, when I am very enthusiastic and moved to tears by the strong emotions. It isn’t enough. I have to organize a daily schedule so that I will be under this influence all the other 23.5 hours.

In our world, the pill has an effect on me for 23.5 hours if I suck on it for half an hour. Gradually, as the digestive juices are extracted, the pill releases all the substances it contains so that they are absorbed by the body for several hours.

We have to do the same. However, a person cannot do that because he is constantly on his level, while here, he has to be between two. Two levels, as it says in The Zohar, are the letters of the upper “Hey” and the lower “Hey.” The upper “Hey” is Bina that operates on me, and I am Malchut, the lower “Hey.” What should be between us? It is the Creator.

So, I have to place the Creator before me, which means that all the awakenings that my Malchut feels, my desire, as a result of receiving half an hour of “infusion,” all its potential preparation for correction, all must be revealed practically during the 23.5 hours. I have to assist it by trying not to detach myself from the goal of “Israel (one who yearns for the Creator), the Torah (the Light that Reforms), and the Creator are one.” For that, I received the injection.

Of course, I can only do it with the help of the group where we are in one thought and thus influence one another. There is no other choice. A person cannot do it by himself. Even if he writes himself a thousand memos and puts them everywhere, he won’t see them. Even if he takes a servant to remind him, he won’t hear him.

It is possible only in the form that is above him, when the force that obliges him to hear, that is, to establish a connection between the two letters of “Hey,” comes to him. You can do that only in the group.

Therefore, mutual guarantee is expressed when you are in this activity, in absorbing the medicine that is already within you. If you swallow it and don’t use it, it is as if you received poison from a snake because every medicine is poison. It isn’t by chance that the symbol of medicine is a snake coiling around a cup of poison.

If you don’t use this means correctly, it becomes the potion of death. Then you will discover it through suffering and not by the Light. This is mechanics, and it must operate this way. There is nothing but the laws of nature here.

This is the root of all the mistakes people make throughout their lives and throughout human history. You could write entire novels about it, but humanity already has no time to read them….
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/8/2012, The Zohar

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An Ounce Of Pleasure

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is a person really able to kill anyone just for an ounce of pleasure?

Answer: This might look like an exaggeration, but this is really the truth. If we were to put a person in special circumstances where he would not be punished for it and would be sure that he would receive an ounce of pleasure without any undesirable consequences, he would absolutely do it.

Man reaches such level of egoism that he is not able to consider anyone else—this is the way man is made. It says nothing about whether he is a good or a bad person; this is just a natural consequence of our egoistic development.

This is true in regard to every person, but we should not wait to get to this point. If we already see the tendency of evolution and the process as a “wise person” or “a sage who sees the new state that is just now originating does,” it means that we can conjecture how this process will end.

Why should we bring humanity to a point where we begin to consume and heartlessly destroy one another? Even now, after a small blow, we can already understand that we should not act this way and change our behavior like a smart child.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11

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An Egoist Who Values The Power To Bestow

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe power to bestow is the power of connection. Without it, I have no connection in my family or contact with other people or children; I have no connection with human society as a whole. We are simply killing ourselves and our community by failing to use the power of bestowal.

This is why it is now becoming absolutely necessary for us to acquire this power. It simply is a matter of life or death. This is why the crisis has come to show us where we are. We have gotten ourselves into this state on our own. Now we only need to examine and evaluate it to understand what we are lacking. We are lacking the power of bestowal. So how do we get it? It is only by building a good environment.

This environment does not exist in nature. We need to build it artificially so that it will serve as an example, pressure us, and push us, helping us to start giving a little. This society will treat everyone as if it were giving them a warning: “You will not get anything if you do not give. Not only will you not receive anything, you will also lose any respect you now have so that you feel like you are nothing, an absolute zero whom everyone disdains.”

The society will influence you through your children and other people whose opinion you value. It will undermine the feeling of self-worth and self-respect in every person who will not strive toward bestowal by showing how low and corrupt he appears in the eyes of society. Everyone will simply turn away from and not wish to be near him or her.

In this way, we will obligate a person to think about acquiring the power to bestow. Let him learn what it is and let him want to be like it. Then, society will treat him the opposite way: It will respect and value him highly.

We do not have any other choice because we need to learn what it means to bestow. When I come to learn, I am interested in having my environment work with me in these two planes: with a stick against my egoism, punishing me with their disdain, and on the other hand, praising me for bestowing. In this way, my egoism will choose to value the power of bestowal directed against it.

I will receive fulfillment and social approval when I bestow. Society will come closer to me and will not offend my big egoism, and it will not shame me.

In other words, we see that in this way, we act above our egoism that has grown and blown out of proportion in every one of us. We can educate a person specifically with the help of egoism through the influence of the environment. This is called integral upbringing because we teach the person to be integral, connected with everyone.

A person begins to appreciate the force of bestowal by virtue of which he acquires the respect and honor of the environment. People envy him for growing so much and being valued so much by his environment. In this way, an egoist begins to value the force of bestowal, to see what can be done with the right environment.

Here, the environment plays the role of an educator, like a father and mother in relation to an infant, like educators and teachers in relation to a child, or like a professor in relation to a student. The big human society acts the same way in relation to every adult.

The way the environment treats a person depends on his or her advancement. Then, thanks to these two forces: reception and bestowal to society, a person acquires an instrument to dig deeper inside themselves, society, and nature. He or she begins to understand what happens in the field of forces, in their own inner psychology, and the inner psychology of nature and society.

This helps a person to begin feeling the way these two forces act in all of reality, the way they operate in a still rock, in plants and animals, inside man, and in the surrounding environment and family—everywhere. He works with these two forces like their owner. In this way, he examines them and learns about everything.

He enters a network that connects all of reality, a network created by the intertwining of these two forces. This is why he understands the entire program of creation, our entire process of development and where it leads.

After all, everything conforms to a certain process. It is only that we do not see it now because we only operate with one force. When a person begins to use both of these forces on his own, it gives him a scientific instrument for research, which he uses to examine everything that happens in nature. In this way, he becomes the true master of his destiny and of everything that happens. All this is done by raising consciousness to a new level.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11

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Analysis Of The Human Nature

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the course of clarifications, a question arises: “What exactly do we need to change in ourselves in order to acquire a greater similarity to nature?” After all, if we come to harmony and balance with it, we’ll feel comfort, fulfillment, and peace. We’ll stop feeling its pressure that is expressed as problems that grow like a snowball, wars, strife and divorces in families, illnesses, epidemics, tsunamis, and other manifestations of natural cataclysms. Thus, what exactly do we need to change in ourselves?

The search for an answer to this question leads us to the investigation of human nature. Man’s inner nature is desire: the desire to live, to feel good, and to enjoy, in other words, a constant search for fulfillment. And a part of these desires is, to a certain extent, empty. Say, I want to rest, and this means that I wish to fulfill the desire for rest, and if I want to eat, then I desire to fill my desire for food.

Usually I have desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, power, and knowledge. These are the basic desires that include in them all the others. Every desire satisfying the needs of my body for food, family, and procreation, as well as the “human” desires in me for wealth, honor, power, and knowledge are divided into many different other desires and their derivatives. And if I have no choice and I understand that through the help of these desires I should unite with other people in order to become similar to the force of nature (the one law), then I will need to correct each of my desires.

Ultimately, all these desires together are called “the will to enjoy” or “the desire to receive pleasure.” Towards what should I direct them in order to correct them? They need to be directed for the benefit of all. And if I only fill myself, such a desire is called “egoistic.” Therefore, I direct each of my desires towards the common good and I accept only that which will go for the benefit of everyone.

It turns out that we don’t have another choice. If we’re all like one family, then I have to take everyone into consideration and think of everyone as one whole. And the law that obliges me to this is also one. That’s why every one of my desires I need to direct towards everyone. And here is where the problem arises: How can this be achieved?

Even if I myself understand it and scientists confirm it (psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists unanimously declare that this is true and that we don’t have another way out), and from my own life experience I see that there is no other method, even then, my nature always believes otherwise. It believes that I first of all need to receive for myself, to provide for my own needs, and not to worry about others. Perhaps I should care for them, but only so that it will make me feel good.

However, this isn’t enough. After all, I don’t feel this way in relation to my family. In a corrected family, I immediately think of all its members as one person and don’t calculate how to make them feel good so that I would feel good from that.

And this law wishes to oblige us to consider everyone as one, the whole world as one single family, so that we will start getting used to it. So what exactly do we need to do for that? Each of us must care about others and all together we have to build a system of a new integral upbringing that will connect us and through various influences and activities will prove that another way does not exist.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 4, 1/1/12

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Shamati #20 Lishma (For Her Name)” 
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter Beresheet (Genesis),” “Bad Mixtures,” Item 292, Lesson 81
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 7, Item 10, Lesson 5
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Preparations for the European Congress: Writings of Rabash The Need for Love of Friends,” (To: “And although the commandment,” continue with: “3 there is a special power”)
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Audio Version Of The Blog – 03.13.12

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