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Is Humanity Threatened With Extinction?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Today, our planet is swept with an unconscious instinctive need for destruction. How can we stop this? For example, a person who is destroying himself with alcohol reaches a certain point where he either perishes or changes radically and begins to lead a normal life.

Answer: I hope that a turn for the better will happen here in the near future too. I hope that it will happen before we have completely depleted the entire planet and annihilated most of its population, after which not even the skeleton of the ruins will remain, like in science fiction movies about the future where people roam the Earth like primal creatures, feeding on some roots, after having survived this catastrophe, the bifurcation.

To make this positive turn take place as soon as possible, we’re trying to disseminate the method of integral education and upbringing. But, frankly, we haven’t found sufficient support among the general public; we have little strength. So I cannot say that I feel a deep sense of satisfaction.

However, I don’t believe that humanity will die out, because this isn’t nature’s intent or its course: This entire chain is built on very rational cause-and-effect constants, laws, and degrees. Therefore we won’t bring ourselves to a complete annihilation.

But we can bring ourselves to a state where the remaining tiny fraction of people that survive after all the disasters (both natural and world wars), which we ourselves will evoke, these people will nevertheless come to a balance with nature and reveal the upper nature as absolute harmony, integrality, unity, and wholeness, and they will exist on this level.

This is not an earthly degree. It’s now a degree where a person attains not the universe that we see today through our individual egoism, but a completely different picture, the full stereo image of nature. We don’t see a flat picture of creation but its depth, along with the forces that evoke this picture and govern it, and all of us together.

We will see everything that stands behind this screen, behind this theater. After all, we don’t know the forces that govern us. We don’t know what will happen in the next moment. We need to get acquainted with these forces, to reveal them. I hope that all of this will manifest itself. But it will only manifest when man will become in at least in some way similar to the integrality and wholeness of nature.
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From a “Talk About Integral Education” 5/21/2012

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Introspection

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What are a deficiency of the individual and a deficiency of the general?

Answer: A deficiency of the individual doesn’t exist in spirituality because it isn’t about the ordinary corporeal desires. In spiritual desires, a person has only one point in the heart, which he still hasn’t realized.

A general deficiency is the ability to detach from oneself and to connect to the general. This means that a person already understands and feels from studying, from being part of the group, and from disseminating that the spiritual world is revealed only in a whole deficiency.

A whole deficiency means that it is connected, at least minimally, which enables a person to perceive several spiritual discernments. Until then, one doesn’t see anything, like in the evening at twilight when everything becomes blurred.

There is a saying that it is evening time when you cannot recognize the face of your friend from a certain distance (four Amot) as everything blends together. However, if I can recognize my friend, it isn’t evening yet.

Evening symbolizes the fact that I can see something, but that I don’t understand exactly what it is. Thus, we gradually begin to come to the understanding that, instead of a revelation, there are several discernments in which we can recognize, similarly to the way we recognize a friend’s face from a distance of four Amot, which means in the four minimal phases of the desire to receive.

In order to do that, I need to connect my desire with the desires of several other friends so that there will be a connection among us, and, from that, I will be able to discern good and evil, light and darkness. I need to clarify what receiving and bestowal means for myself and for others, or for everyone together, among us.

In the connection between us, I already begin to see these discernments: what “in order to receive” means and what “in order to bestow means.” In this place, built by me, in the deficiency by incorporating with others, I already understand to some extent what in order to receive and in order to bestow mean. This is an initial, minimal understanding, but I already can see the difference between the two.

A deficiency is formed in me, a vessel of perceiving by which I can see the spiritual world, to feel it and to see different discernments. Thus, my spiritual introspection opens up, which is different from the external perspective that I have in this world now, where we imagine that we see something.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/13/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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The Benefits And Dangers Of Viruses

Dr. Michael LaitmanGood education is when people receive knowledge together with an explanation that they are ready to accept, because many facts that we receive without explanations, especially during our childhood years, remain in us like viruses, and it becomes impossible to get rid of them. We subconsciously use this baggage of facts and consider them to be true, even though in reality they are wrong and often get in our way.

All this happens because as children and adolescents, we were stuffed with different “irrefutable” truths without explanations. Since then, they have been imprinted within and there is nowhere to hide from them. No matter what you do, you are not in control of the things that have been imprinted in you.

And this is why everything needs to be accompanied by an explanation. There is no need to confuse people with ornate constructions based on higher mathematics—people need to receive a clear, accessible explanation, because otherwise knowledge becomes slogans or axioms, and do not advance people forward. A person needs to develop through common sense when one learns good explanations. Moreover, it is necessary to maintain adequate speed, so an excess of information would not block a person’s ability to absorb information.

Correct education is devoid of unsubstantiated facts. This is because people will not be able to use them in the right way, and it will be very difficult to rid them of this unnecessary load. It is impossible to work with facts when you do not know their causes and consequences. In this case they will not allow a person to create a common picture of reality. Instead, a person treats them as strict laws.

Meanwhile, there are no laws at all in reality: We create them ourselves. Once I am born, necessity pushes me to begin to form a picture of the world, connecting its parts together. This is because we come from a breaking, and our entire reality consists of putting together a mosaic of its parts on all the levels, as deep as it goes, from this world to the world of Infinity, constantly adding new quality and quantity of traits. After all, this picture is multidimensional.

So, when I give a person an ultimatum regarding the way he should put together certain parts, I send him down the wrong path, and he continues to follow directions since he does not know how to make analyses and draw analogies. Instead of giving him prepared answers and naked facts, I need to give him a study technique, a method, a guide for action.

This is why modern education is collapsing. This is because we are molding “soldiers,” skilled “workers,” rather than creative people who know how to put together pieces of a mosaic.

Question: You cannot just confine yourself to facts, even if they are true?

Answer: The facts are not the problem. A person needs more than knowledge: He needs to develop his mind, put together things that no one has put together before. He needs to have an approach, a new program instilled in him, which allows him to independently form a picture of reality in him.

A child will not learn through forced actions: This gives a very limited effect. When I tell him something, I must explain why this is the way it is. Otherwise I introduce another “virus” into him, and he will not be able to rationally use this “truth” that is imprinted in him. Caused by a certain context, it will keep emerging in his subconscious until the end of his life, and only the death of the body will put an end to this.

Question: During the period of concealment, we also use slogans that we do not understand. Why are these not “viral” to us?

Answer: That is true, Kabbalah has its own “mottos”: “There is none else beside Him,” “Good who does good,” “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” etc. However, they come from a higher degree and cannot come to us in any other form. We “swallow” these viruses, artificially try to shape ourselves in accordance with them, and thus we attract Reforming Light. And it corrects and lifts us, providing us with a new understanding of the world, a new mind and a new feeling.

On the other hand, in our world, we swallow false facts instead of acquiring common sense, and this does not allow us to move forward by combining all the parts, studying the right picture of the world, and developing on its basis.

After all, I can be independent in our world, while I will never be able to enter spirituality on my own. On the contrary, I must try to realize the laws of the spiritual world in me, connect to them to the extent of my abilities, and then the upper Light will lift me there.

This way, positive instead of negative “viruses” operate in the spiritual world: Be near great people, exalt your friends in your eyes, and constantly strive towards the Light, which you know nothing about. All these things are not facts in my perception; nevertheless, receiving them from the spiritual world is beneficial.

In our perception, even Kabbalah books are “viruses.” They speak of things that we cannot feel, see, or hear. However, I study these texts in order to want to rise with their help. Let these “viruses” strike me so I would become infected with love. And then I will come to it.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/12/12, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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