Audio Version Of The Blog – 04.21.12

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Why No One Will Dominate The 21st Century

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Charles Kupchan, Professor of International Affairs, Georgetown University): “The distribution of global power is fast changing. That much is certain. China and other developing nations are quickly ascending the pecking order. Meanwhile, the three pillars of the Western world – the United States, Europe, and Japan – are beset by a prolonged economic downturn and disaffected electorates.

“The absence of consensus over which a country will oversee the coming world is just as it should be. That’s because the twenty-first century will not be dominated by any country. The United States will do just fine, but the era of Western primacy is coming to an end. Meanwhile, none of the world’s rising nations will have the combination of material and ideological strength needed to exercise global hegemony. Although ascending nations have forged a new grouping – the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) – to coordinate their policies and aggregate their muscle, they do not share a coherent vision of what comes next. They know what they do not want: the continuation of a world dominated by the West. But they are very unlikely to arrive at a common view of what they want instead. This century will not belong to the United States, China, India, Brazil, or anyone else; it will be no one’s world.”

My Comment: The world will change, not according to the rules of international relations, but in accordance with the change in people. It will “fall apart” in order to be “assembled” in a completely new world order that will be dominated by one force only: the force of mutual bestowal, guarantee, and love.
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Hope Is In Education

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (B. Dalinger, Professor, Member of the Russian Academy of Natural History):“Man’s mission is not to adapt to the environment, but to act, to create, to change the environment. … the purpose of education is not to transfer knowledge, abilities, and practical skills and to help students “master” concepts and socially important values, but to create conditions for developing the human aspect within man. Schools need to ensure that the picture of the world that the student acquires will be whole and meaningful.”

My Comment: The world is becoming more and more convinced that education is the only means for the correction of a human being and the world that he creates around him.
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Obsession With Money Deadens People

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Bruce E. Levine, a clinical psychologist, author of Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite): “A preoccupation with money is nothing new in our culture, but have Americans become even more ‘money-centric,’ and does this deaden us, making us incapable of resisting injustices?
“A money-centric society is one in which money is at the center of virtually all thoughts, decisions and activities. …Such a society coerces even the non-greedy to focus on money at the expense of damn near everything else in order to survive.
“Both greed and fear make one more money-centric, and in recent years, it has become more socially acceptable to be greedy and increasingly commonplace to be financially insecure.
“Nowadays, nearly everybody, even teachers and postal workers, lacks job security. Today, I see money worries, more than anything else, triggering panic attacks, depression, and alcohol abuse. Money discussions have even come to dominate family counseling sessions, where high school students increasingly talk about their fear of becoming financial losers, and parents fear their children will ruin their lives by accumulating student-loan debt while pursuing fields where there are few decent-paying jobs.
“As late as 1936, a sitting president of the United States running for reelection knew that that it was quite popular to blast the greedy, selfish elite: ‘We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.’
“That was Franklin D. Roosevelt on Oct. 31, 1936. Contrast FDR’s speech with President Barack Obama’s response in an interview excerpted by Bloomberg Businessweek and the Wall Street Journal in February 2010: ‘First of all, I know both those guys. They’re very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system….’
“So, it should surprise no one that the Rolling Stones do corporate gigs, including one a decade ago in which they took in $2 million to entertain Pepsi bottlers in Hawaii.
“Equally widespread and probably even more responsible for dissipating rebellious energy is when songs of perceived rebellious artists are used as background music in commercials used to propagandize listeners into associating their rebellious urges with consumer products.
“Spirituality, music, theater, cinema, and other arts can be revolutionary forces, but the gross commercialization of these has deadened their capacity to energize rebellion. So now damn near everything—not just organized religion—has become an ‘opiate of the masses.'”
My Comment: Egoism directs our entire life, and there is nothing but personal gain behind our actions, even the most “unselfish” ones. We can rise above our nature into the property of bestowal only under the influence of the force of the “Light.”
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Israel: By Birth Or By Goal

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Which part of the world do the non-Jewish people who study Kabbalah belong to?

Answer: Today they belong to the category of “Israel.”

If before the term “Israel” referred to the actual people, today it refers to those who aspire “straight to the Creator” (Yashar–El), that is, to the spiritual idea. Today it makes no difference any more who your parents were. What’s important is whether you accept the method of correction, whether you have the “point in the heart” (•). According to this point you are called “Israel.” If you don’t have this point, you belong to the part called “the nations.” So it follows today you can belong to “the nations,” and tomorrow you can become “Israel.” Eventually everyone has to reach the goal.

 

Israel By Birth Or By Goal

 

Whoever has received this spark must disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah and at the same time take care of their own advancement, the group, and the means necessary for that so that the general pyramid of humanity will not turn upside down and land on its head, thus placing all the harmful parts of “the nations” at the head of the pyramid.

Moreover, Baal HaSulam emphasizes that these categories exist in every person, and today the entire world has to identify and correct them because we are now at the final phase of the correction. This is the reason that today “Israel” are people who yearn for the Creator and not anything else. 
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/19/2012 on Holocaust Memorial Day 

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How To Overcome Fear

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When I leave the group, good feelings remain in my memory. However, when I return to it, a certain fear appears within me that forces me to clarify what I am afraid of.

Answer: You are not sufficiently connected to the group. You don’t have anything to fear if you are small among them. If you are still afraid, you need to make yourself even smaller, up to the point of a fetus within a mother’s womb. Then, you will have nothing to fear.

The entire problem is that you trying to guard yourself, and fears appear along with all kinds of doubts, worries, and so on. To the extent of these fears, doubts, and worries, you need to understand that they are given to you so that you become more deeply integrated in the group. Then these fears, doubts, and worries will disappear. By annulling yourself before the group, you will find yourself within it under its protection. The group becomes a womb for you, as something big within which you exist.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/23/12, Lesson 2 

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Endless Life Between Two Seconds

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If the Creator manages all the opposing forces that appear during this time, why is the transition between two degrees so dangerous?

Answer: Our main work is concentrated specifically in the transition between the degrees, not in the fixed state. When I am on a certain degree, I work only in order to delve into these states, to understand and examine them.

In our world, we think that the main thing is the achieved state, not the transition to it. However, in the spiritual world, what matters is the transition, not the state itself.

We remain in a certain state only for the period of time required for us to discover it. It could last for a second, then the transition, again, a state lasting a second and again, the transition. There was a Kabbalist who told his students that he went through 400 ascents and descents in a few minutes’ time.

In the spiritual world, we feel an inverted and different dimension into which we break within the framework of time, movement, and space. It is specifically by this that we penetrate the space between the seconds of our world. In our world, the seconds move directly one after another. Spirituality is found between them because spiritual life takes place specifically in the transitions, not in the states themselves.

A static state is a dead one, and it doesn’t count in spirituality. It exists only in order to complete the degree, which includes in its sub-degrees a great many internal transitions. This is why a person, who is in the spiritual world, is constantly going through changes and has no rest.

The spiritual concepts do not exist within our coordinates of time, movement, and space because in our world, there are no breaks between the seconds, there are no gaps either in time or space. Whereas spirituality indicates that you find an interruption between one second and the next, and penetrate its depth, thus entering the spiritual dimension.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/17/2012, Writings of Baal HaSulam 

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What Does It Mean To Change The World?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is it possible for us to change the world right now with sufficient speed and effectiveness?

Answer: To change the world means to explain how it is currently and how it should be. By correcting myself and beginning to be an integral part in this entire space within this system, I thereby change the world. When I explain to the entire world what is happening to it and how we need to change in order to bring the world into balance, I am altering it.

Basically, I am providing explanations so that people would change themselves. There is no coercion in it. I cannot force them, I can’t come up with some new society, stick them in there, and then the world would become better, by no means.

We are at a stage where there can be no other change. Nature has always driven us forward. We thought that we were changing the world, but in reality, we were simply pushed toward happiness with a “stick.” We were always trying to do something, and ultimately, we have come to such a state where we improve the world only by improving ourselves with our awareness, with a rational understanding of nature, and with our connection and balance with it.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 2/26/12 

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