From Zero To Ein Sof (Infinity)

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In every practical work there are certain stages: a beginning, middle, and an end. What are the stages of the integral process? What do we have to take people through?

Answer: Integrality is already Ein Sof (Infinity). You know how to calculate an integral: from zero to infinity. So each time you try to put the puzzle together, to compose questions, and to find the solutions and the answers to the questions, you immediately discover a deeper layer of what’s going on. Nature is infinite in its depth, while we only take the first layer off and then the second layer, etc. and they are revealed as deeper and deeper each time.

We see that even what worked well and systematically in the previous layers and most important cyclically (since a cycle, the repetition, whether it is clear or static, is a result of every process and every plan that is scientifically based) then in the deeper layers that we discover the attributes, the laws, the previous patterns, as a whole don’t work anymore, but there is something else that works. If we return to the previous stage, we see that it works there, but in the deeper level it doesn’t work because totally new relationships appear there between the entrance and the exit. This is really an amazing discovery in the depth of the psychology of human consciousness.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #17, 02/28/12

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A Turning Point

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When there is a certain discussion in the group there are different mechanisms of resistance that stand in a person’s way. So does it mean that most of the time we will be busy dealing with this resistance mechanism?

Answer: No. I believe that it shouldn’t be here. During the preparation stage a person has to reach the feeling of despair from working with his ego. He has to understand that there is no life in it.

We should understand that if I want to attain the next stage of my development, the next dimension, the exit into the level of harmony with nature, I have to be disappointed with my egoistic development and not blow up the ego. Otherwise, it will simply kill me. It doesn’t allow me to integrally communicate with others; it won’t give me the vessel with which I can feel the harmony of nature and enter this dimension, this level.

I have to leave the ego at all their previous levels of development. The turning point, the bifurcation point, the splitting, the crisis, that we are going through today lead us to the fact that we will really “break” and leave our ego below. Humanity is facing a big problem: feeling the immense ego we’ve attained, being disappointed with it, and leaving it because we are compelled. This is called the phase of “the recognition of evil.” We have to go through it.

If we are talking about a group that already begins to feel the next level of human development, it should be people who are ready to leave the ego. They should understand that they have to totally change internally, like inserting a disc with a new program into a computer, erasing the old program and installing a totally new program. I am ready to be “operated” anew, to be fully “upgraded.” I am ready for that because on the level of the recognition of evil I found out that my ego only harms me; I perceive it as bad.

When people reach the recognition of evil and agree to try, even theoretically, to rise above their ego, they do it in the group with two guides that direct them a little, and at the same time cooperate with them. The group begins to gradually feel where these psychological “exits” are above their ego, to the new altruistic psychology, to the level called “nature.”
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #17, 02/28/12

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The World Is Weary From Working For The Greedy Pharaoh

Dr. Michael LaitmanBefore the ruler of Egypt dies, everybody’s work has an egoistic nature. When the sovereign dies, he loses his significance; in other words, we achieve a state at which we stop cherishing our ego and do not want to devote our lives to it any longer.

We start realizing that our ego is not worth working for. We still continue to be attached to our selfishness and we even get a certain pleasure from it. At the same time, our consciousness expands and we come to understand that our ego is worthless. Even if we continue doing the same thing for 10 or 20 years, we’ll never rid ourselves of this slavery.

When a person finds himself in an unbearable situation, he asks: “What is next?” However, we always have a chance to arrive to such a query before the circumstances we are in become absolutely intolerable. All we need is to raise the level of our consciousness in order to become “sages” who see the future states in their infancy.

An infant or a small child doesn’t see the future; he demands everything right away. After he gets a little older, he begins to realize that he has to wait in order to get something he wants. When a person grows and is more intelligent, he is already making complicated calculations.

Our lives are limited by some 70 – 80 years, which makes us feel that we still have plenty of time ahead. However, as we grow we begin to clearly realize that time tends to get squeezed. We stop being animals and turn into humans. Animals never consider their future; they don’t think about tomorrow, nor do they look into the nearest moment.

Animals live in the moment. Even though animals sense certain things which humans are unable to comprehend (for example, an approaching earthquake or tsunami), they still perceive life solely through sensations of the current moment.

People, on the contrary, look into the future and are able to detect signs of their next steps. When a person is convinced that there is no need to work hard for the sake of his ego, he plunges into despair. We see now that half of the world is depressed and the number of suicides is steadily increasing. This means that people do not want to work for the Pharaoh anymore; they just don’t see any point to this kind of life.

This happens in the most affluent and civilized European (mostly Scandinavian) countries where people are secure with all sorts of material things, but it is not clear what to live for.

People would not ask questions if they did not sense that the final outcome is quite different from their current well-to-do existence. These questions emerge only with dissatisfaction: Either they lack happiness or they foresee that their current state of contentment will end soon.

So, when the “kind” Pharaoh dies, new questions arise: Why do we have to work so hard for our ego? This is what humankind as a whole and each individual separately keeps asking. It’s the point at which clarification takes place: What is the purpose of our work—is it receiving or giving?
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/9/12, Writings of Rabash

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The Birth Of Something New

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn our current global world we are all connected whether we like it or not, and this is dangerous because it can lead to an explosion, a world war. There are already talks about it, but there is no solution.

 

If the ego has already ended its development and doesn’t allow us to advance further, then the pressure that expands this integral system, which is totally mutually dependent, may bring about anything. And we will be ready to do anything just to break this connection. This is the uniqueness of our times.

Endless research studies show that we have reached a special point in our development that is unprecedented in human history. In the past, the growing ego constantly pushed us from behind, and we knew that life would be good for us or for our children. But today we don’t expect our children to have a better life than we have. On the contrary, soon we will totally deplete all the natural resources, pollute the environment, and run out of fresh water and clean air. There is no place where we can develop.

This crisis is the essence of a new humanity. It isn’t by chance that the word “crisis” (ρίσις) means birth in ancient Greek, a turning point from which a new life begins. So by examining the current situation, we have to understand: What is new here? What is being revealed to us?

The whole problem is that until now we have developed through one, negative force that molded different needs in us and pushed us forward to fulfill them. We lack a second, positive force that pulls and unites. This force doesn’t exist in our nature, in the human essence. No matter what we do, it is all meant for personal gain, to use others for our own benefit.

So where can we attain this second force? After all, our body and all natural systems are built on the cooperation of two opposing forces: plus and minus, hot and cold, pressure and

vacuum, etc. In the inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature there is always one against the other, and life develops in the balance between these forces, in harmony, in the right absorption and emission. But on the “human” level and on the level of our consciousness the positive force doesn’t exist, only the negative force: I constantly want to use whatever I see and receive what I feel that I lack.

Today we are at the peak of this trend, and at this point we must realize that we lack the other positive force. It will not come to us instinctively, naturally; we have to develop it ourselves. Many scientists are studying this problem. In the ARI Institute we are in contact with thousands of experts throughout the world. They all agree about this issue, that without this positive force we will not be able to go on. But where can we find it? The answer is simple: a person has to stabilize his source by building a new society.

It is common knowledge that we develop by our society. A child left in a forest will grow like an animal and will not develop into a person. A person is the result of the human society he grows in. This is why we are so concerned about the friends our children play with, the school they go to, and who they see; society molds us.

If we want to create a new man that lives in harmony with others, then we have to establish the right environment for him in order to teach him the integral way of thinking that is based on bestowal and not on receiving.

Today as the mutual global connection is growing stronger, we already feel the connections among countries. In the future the social pressure will also increase. So we simply have to take care of ourselves.

Everything depends on whether we establish an environment. No one is happy about the current situation. The conflicts everywhere are more intense and the despair is growing. There is no other choice. It is time to develop the integral education, to draw the positive force. Then we will discover that the current crisis is revealing negativity only so that positivity will be placed opposite to it. In this way our society (on every level, up to the global level), like all of nature, will be based on two forces: the positive and the negative. In the middle, in the connection, in the balance between them, we will find new life, the true “human” level.

We will feel the harmony in nature that is concealed from us since we are working with only one force. By rising above the inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature, and working on the human level by independently acquiring the positive force and balancing it with the negative force, we will become acquainted with nature’s perfect system, and discover the forces that manage us behind the screen of matter. We will suddenly discover this huge system that created life and that manages it through evolution. We will begin to develop consciously by discovering these forces and advance with them.

So our current state is actually our birth. Everything depends on us, and on whether we will manage to organize the integral education. It isn’t by chance that the current crisis is global and varied; it includes everyone and everything, and we have to find the general balance point to compensate for it.

Then, we will truly feel happy. We will begin to discover nature’s eternity, and will feel that we are on the “human” level, which is independent of our body. In our consciousness we will rise above it and discover nature’s “level of knowledge” that manages the whole universe. Many scientists are talking about this today, especially those who deal with quantum physics.

Eventually the integral education will open up new horizons for us in science, culture, society, and family by which we will acquire and create a new dimension of life, and promise ourselves a better future.
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From the Lecture in Chile 5/1/12, “Reaching the Internal Connection”

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 05.05.12

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio

Brazil Convention – 05.05.12

Brazil Convention, Lesson 2

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Brazil Convention, Workshop 2

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Brazil Convention, Lesson 3

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Brazil Convention, Workshop 3

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Brazil Convention, Lesson 4

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Less Indecisiveness

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What can we tell people who are still not sure of whether they should sign up for the upcoming convention?

Answer: It is very important to unite on the corporeal level to be able to move on to uniting the souls, in other words, to the correction of the common soul, which broke and separated into billions of pieces. A convention is necessary for a person. If it happens, let us say, once a year in your region, then you must try to participate in it.

It is hard to believe that the Creator would give someone a disturbance a person is not able to overcome when it comes to coming to the convention. After all, there is none else beside Him. Everything comes from the Creator. So can it be that a person’s correction is so hopeless that the Creator will put a hopeless obstacle before him and cut off all the ways? I cannot imagine this.

Simply, the analysis of the situation is entrusted to the person himself. He feels like there are “guards” on his way, who push him away—but this is done only so he would realize how necessary the convention and how important the goal are.

So less indecisiveness. Who knows when the next time will be and whether there will be a next time. I am ready to give you everything. Just come, and we will unite. It is the key to the correction of all the negativity that manifests in us because we are opposite to the Source.

Question: Can friends, who have lost their inspiration and strengths, use the convention to ascend?

Answer: The convention is a place of healing. We all unite physically and virtually—on the plane of this world—to overcome ourselves and attain a real unity. Even if we do not yet understand what it is, we still play pretend like little children.

So, a convention heals and raises the level from the corporeal to the spiritual. A convention generates a force that can heal anything. We need to see the source of energy and information in it, in other words, the manifestation of Light in our world. There is no better illustration of unity in the chronicles of the correction of the world than a convention.

And this is why I recommend everyone to participate in it, and be as friendly and united as possible. You already need to invest into the preparation and establish the closest contact possible with the venue, the theme, and the entire process the convention will take us through. Bring those who deserve it with you, and we will be able to ascend to a spiritual degree. It is like the miracle of the exodus from Egypt—let it also happen here.
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From the Brazil Convention 5/3/12, Lesson 1, Shamati #8

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This One Is For Mommy

Dr. Michael LaitmanA person must check his reactions every moment. Maybe he asks the Creator to give him a good life? In this case it is as if he is saying: “You are sending me evil. Please, be kind to me.” This is what the “99 percent” do.

Or a person says otherwise: “I realize that I feel evil and I understand that the reason for it lies in my qualities, which are opposite to You. After all, everyone rejects according to his own flaws. And I ask You for correction: Give me the strength to correct myself.”

A person experiences burdening along the way (“I have created the evil inclination”), but he remembers that the Creator sends it to him (“I have created the Torah as a spice”). And then the person acquires the Light, which is concealed in the Torah and returns to the Source. He asks for the correction of his own qualities: They are directed towards egoistic reception and are opposite to the Creator—so let them become directed towards bestowal and then the person will feel that the Creator is kind.

But why do I need this? To feel good? In this case, I am still an egoist. Is it so I would stop cursing the Creator? “What if He punishes me for perceiving His goodness as evil?” No, this is also egoism. So how do I form my reaction? What state do I need to come to? This is not about words but the heart’s aspirations: What correction am I asking for?

I ask for a correction when I feel bad in my desire to receive, but in my intention, directed towards the Creator, I feel that it is coming from Him, Good, Who does good.

In this way a person divides into two parts that are connected: He is submerged in darkness in his egoistic, restricted desire for pleasure—and he feels the Light above it. And then he is sure that the correction that he receives is not to satisfy his self-love. No, his pleasure is above this, and he really is in a state of bestowal.

For example: Mom makes me porridge, but I do not like it. Mom knew what she was doing: She made the healthiest food for me. But I cannot see the value in it. Should I ask her for a different porridge? Or should I eat this one that tastes bad, and change my attitude towards mom above my sensations? This way I will begin to acquire her qualities, her view of the world, her desires, directed towards bestowal. This is how I grow as I acquire my spiritual image.

There is no other solution – it is written: “All will attain Me, from the small to the great.” And “attaining” means to unite above our egoism. This is the fundamental principle of spiritual work. And even though it might appear difficult, in reality it is very easy when I act in unity with the group, and it is impossibly difficult when I try to move on my own.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/3/12, Shamati #8

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The Complexity Of Integral Interaction

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: While studying in the group, people feel a kind of embarrassment because new tools, mechanisms, and experience are required in the mutual integral cooperation. A person has gotten used to living and working according to a certain program.

Suddenly he discovers that the program has changed. People remain in the circle and their role is simply to carry on a conversation between them, to get to know one another, to see other people. A person begins to worry and to ask: “Tell me what to do? Where are we headed?”

Answer: The point is that they find themselves closed among themselves, and we must develop a new approach to a new integral dialog with one another.

A person really feels concern and uneasiness. He suddenly sees that he isn’t ready for the mutual integral cooperation because he was taught differently.

The interesting thing about the mutual cooperation is that we don’t just discover our interdependence, but that there can be no hierarchy here, and this is very complicated. We are used to thinking that someone is a bit above me and that I am a bit lower, I can hide and when the time comes, I can come out and declare that I don’t exist. This is our ordinary social communication.

Here, however, we have to establish a new infrastructure that has to be among us and not in each of us. We don’t have to arrange people hierarchically, as each one represents a small individual part, which together make up all of society. In the mutual integral cooperative society, it is what we form outside ourselves, something that is around us, that is external, among us. Each one enters this society as a small integral part and dissolves among the others.

Therefore, people find it very hard to experience this exit from themselves: I am in society, as part of it; “I” and “they” are the same thing. There is no such thing as “I,” and later there is no such thing as “we” either, because “we” is just a sum, a number, while an integral is the sum in which all the elements add up so that they are not separate entities that come together, but rather a totally new whole in which the individuality disappears and the unity appears.

This is a difficult experience and not everyone can easily become accustomed to it, or shall I say, bear it. One must go through much pain, because you seem to be cutting yourself off of yourself. You enter a group and lose yourself inside it: “Where is the ‘I,’ where are all my elements, my basic inclinations?” It is as if you don’t exist and the result is something general. Moreover, it isn’t our “sum,” we don’t arrive at some common opinion, but suddenly there is a partnership born in us, which exists on its own.

I understand the people who reach that and who feel a little bad, you have to get used to it.

They need a serious theoretical preparation and practical studies. We have to show them that this is what our society that was born of one element, of an initial drop of semen somewhere in the past generations, should be like. It has grown to several billion people who now have to reunite. They don’t destroy themselves and their functioning on the corporeal level, but they should all come to the state in which they will all be one image of one single creature.

Nature compels us to precisely this closeness, to where we feel everyone else as one whole, including ourselves of course. There will be no integrals, no differentials, and no sums. It will be something that is totally new, a new society that grows from the terrible separated state of the global crisis.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #17, 02/28/12

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Feel Your Neighbor’s Desires

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Which psychological or verbal actions will help a person from an integral group “come out of himself?”

Answer: To do this one first needs to study the materials we have prepared about integration, interconnection, and mutual connection between people where it is written about how to start coming “out of yourself” and feel others, which means to feel their desires.

In reality, I cannot feel the desires of others, but when we acquire common desires and common aspirations, then I can imagine that they are common and can “enter” them as I understand that my group partners, my friends, also exist in these common desires and aspirations.

These can be both men and women since a group can be mixed, but it can also be homogenous, depending on the circumstances. Sometimes it is best for men to study alone without the participation of the women. It is harder for women to be together, they do not communicate as well with each other. We must take all of this into consideration.

In general a lot depends on the people. None of this matters when they are prepared. But when they are not prepared, we even need to take their social level, origin, and other things into consideration.

The group needs to be carefully selected to make sure there are no “black sheep” in it, who will slow the process down because they have their own way of doing things, a certain position that obligates them to act in a certain way or in some way they were taught. These people need to be removed from the group because they are unable to flow with it right from the beginning. And then they can enter it very slowly and passively as they become closer to the group training.
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From “A Talk on Integral Education” #17, 2/28/12

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