Audio Version Of The Blog – 06.17.12

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Fundamentals of Kabbalah – 06.17.12

A Virtual Lesson on Fundamentals of Kabbalah: “Harkov 2012”

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A Harmonious Family In An Egoistic Society

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How is it possible in an egoistic society to change the system of domestic economic relations of a family to an integral system of relations? In what way is it possible to look at this situation?

Answer: If the society remains individualistic, then individuals under the influence of the integral education and training system will change; they will perceive the world in a new way. So how does this person change his small world?

I think that people in a family will begin to relate to everything they do, interacting between them and consuming information for their small mutual home from the viewpoint of correct economic consumption. This means that they will have everything they need for life. And all the rest, the feeling of fulfillment, harmony, happiness, wealth, all that a person wants, will come to them specifically from the feeling of their harmonious relation to the world.

Of course, along with that, the influence of the egoistic and unharmonious world won’t overlook them, but they will actually, in any case, be internally filled with happiness and harmony that they constantly achieve for themselves.

Domestic economics will change. Out of necessity, people will be satisfied with simple food, simple clothing, plain furniture, and so on. The search for pleasure has exceeded the boundaries of corporeal interests, thus these needs will not be found at the level of self-restraint, but at the natural, necessary and correct level for existence.

The same thing also pertains to the level of income. When a person understands that he has no special demands, when he looks at the world in this way, then of course, it will be simply, easy, and free.

Moreover, the needs of people to communicate will naturally be at the level of the environment that resembles them according to their structure, according to the integrality. In this way, these societies and groups will develop.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/21/12

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On The Crest Of The Protest Movements

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What should we do so that our quiet voice, the drop in the ocean, will be heard as loudly as possible so that the drops will become streams and people will finally hear us?

Answer: I think that we have to be on the crest of the protest movements, because the government studies them and is afraid of them. If we take our place in this protest movement and rise above everyone by showing them and convincing them that the solution is not to destroy, rob, break shop windows and set fire to shops, then first, the government will see us as a positive factor and second psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, and others will study this phenomenon. We have to enter these protest movements and act in parallel by showing everyone our ideology, our method.

I hope that with the power of the great protest movements and their millions we will become known.

Of course, the protest movements themselves don’t want to use the gentle methods that we offer, but on the other hand, they have no method of their own—robbing banks like the Bolsheviks or the French during the revolutions?

So how can we act? If these are free democratic counties, we should use the parliamentary systems and ask them to vote for one member or another, since the protests on the street have never really led to anything.

The point is that there is a totally different picture here. If at any time the protest movements were a kind of a catalyst of social, economic and socio-political processes, today they cannot do anything because we’ve reached a state that has no place to be catalyzed.

The government cannot do anything. You can’t push it to make any decisions. It can cut the political pie a little differently to throw you some small handout, to buy the leaders of the protest movements, or some other such action; there are many methods they can use here.

The main thing is that neither the government nor the protest movements can offer anything that is real, even if it isn’t ripe yet so that the movements will lead us faster to a point where something new is born. Here nothing can be born. So they understand that except for shouting, “Give me!” There is nothing they can do and the government has nothing to take and to give.

We’ve reached a state in which all the countries are deep in debt. Where will they take from? There aren’t enough funds to give to everyone. What does it mean to share? It means to cut spending on other needs. Suppose the officials steal, okay, so they give out what they steal. Even if you put them in jail, take what they stole, and suppose that from now on no one will steal; it won’t change anything. I am not talking about corruption in certain countries, but about normal democratic countries. No matter how you calculate the budget, nothing will help, because we are in such a state that people are being fired from their jobs since they are not needed. There is no need for them!

It isn’t just another crisis that can be overcome, like in the past, by introducing new technology or by war. We understand that today this isn’t the solution to the problem. Therefore, we don’t take the role of advocating cutbacks, but the role of the teachers, teaching the source of the solution that no one has.

This means that we should show the general population that they don’t have a solution. We see what is happening with the protest movements: Their attempts to make seemingly positive changes lead to the opposite results after a while. What is more, it happens every time. So it’s better not to do anything. When the state tries to help and begins to look for reserves and give people more, eventually it leads to higher prices and to even greater imbalance.

No one has a solution, and we only need to constantly, persistently, and stubbornly offer our method until it is heard—the method according to which a person will change by himself and become an integral part of the integral society. Then we will be able to balance ourselves, society, and nature and will reach general harmony.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/21/12

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Preventing The Impending Threat

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Suppose we have information about future threats that worry us. We hear it and we agree with it. What can we do in order to prevent it?

Answer: We have many options, and many ways to disseminate. First we have to use all the different protest movements, since they are actually an internal protest against everything that is happening in the world these days: against the rising prices, the uneven share of the wealth, and other such phenomena. This protest is against the current state of society. We can use the protest actions successfully in order to convey the massage to the masses. We can use the concern a person has for children. We see the ugly way children are being educated these days. They don’t receive any form of education but merely information, and they don’t want that either. There is violence in schools, drug problems, sexual abuse, etc., families are falling apart and few want to preserve the family.

We must somehow try to show a person that it is certainly possible to live differently, although he has grown tired of all the attempts to do something. It all so simple: He simply needs to surf the net and to reach the course of integral education.

Working with school children, we use a very interesting method: First, the teachers are trained and then they use the integral method in the classroom. We can see the results within several weeks as the children change. Parents suddenly see totally different children who have become better, more pleasant, obedient, and so on. Then there is the need to change the parents, since the environment influences the children. This means that they, too, have to participate in a course of integral education. There is no need to tell them about the future changes, since the moment they begin the course and participate in the workshops, they suddenly discover a totally different existence, a different way of communicating, another life.

Today we are actively and intensively preparing a whole team of lecturers, teachers, educators, and organizers who will be dealing with this. But in the meantime, it is just a drop in the ocean.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 6/13/12

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Shifting The Bifurcation Point

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If the path to the point of bifurcation is inevitable, then what is our task, what is the purpose?

Answer: Our task is to advance this point before it appears naturally. This can be done if we explain and demonstrate the evil we’re heading toward, the forced state in which we are, and how this forced state can be corrected to conscious good development. This is not only the recognition of evil, but also a correction.

Here, we need to play on a very simple, basic human feeling, our attitude toward children. We still have some predisposition left for that, although it’s far from what it was, let’s say, fifty years ago. Today, there’s a noticeable emptiness and coldness in relationships between parents and children, but a certain basis for that still remains.

In addition, we can work through mass media and celebrities. We need to introduce integral upbringing and self-education to the world as a fashionable trend so that it would be respectable, give a person honor, exaltation, respect, self-esteem, and a sense of belonging to an elite movement.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 6/13/12

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Is Man A Rational Being?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is man a rational being after all?

Answer: This is a big question. In our time, the consciousness of mankind is aimed at self-destruction. Today we are not rational in any regard.

We call it a “crisis,” but I would call it something else. These are sequential steps towards self-destruction, just like a rabbit that moves straight into the jaws of a snake as if it were hypnotized, and there is nothing it can do about it. Hypnosis pulls him forward, and he must come to it. I do not consider this to be a rational approach to life.

Today we are simply slaves to our egoism. It has reached its maximum, and it rules over us without any subtleness or other calculations and leads us towards self-destruction so we would finally reach the realization of evil.

I cannot say if this will be reached through enormous suffering. This depends on the people, on the dissemination of the method of integral upbringing and education.

But our current development is not rational. We neither see anything rational in our consumption, communication, arts, sciences, nor in their use.

We see that money rules everything. Mass media is above politics, government, the judicial system, reward and punishment: All are ruled by money. And this is absolutely not rational! This is a purely egoistic category, which does not exist in nature!

We could understand it if it were done for power, knowledge, and fame. If wealth were synonymous with power, fame, and knowledge, then this would be a different story, but it is simply wealth for the sake of wealth. It is beyond the limits of corporeal values and categories. It is becoming something virtual.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/21/12

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Introductory Lecture “The Essence Of Religion According To The Book Of Zohar” – 06.12.12

Kabbalah for the Nation Introductory Series is broadcast live on the Israeli cable channels Yes-66 and Hot-66, as well as on kab.tv, and is simultaneously translated into English, Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, and Turkish. Here are some pictures from the lecture in Zikhron Yaakov on “The Essence of Religion According to The Book of Zohar”:

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Reviving The Routine Work

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn order to reach a goal we need the means, and our means is our exertion. The more we exert ourselves and the more focused, clarified, and goal oriented our exertion is, the more strongly we draw the Light that Reforms that advances us.

Therefore, every moment in life is given to us in order to search for and to clarify what is the most effective thing that I should do that will help me draw the Light that Reforms, as it says: “I have created the evil inclination, I have created the Torah as a spice for it, since the Light in it reforms,” which means that you correct the evil inclination and turn it into a good inclination. In this good inclination, like in a good vessel, you receive the feeling of spiritual life.

This is the formula of correction. So our exertion is to try to discover the most effective means at any given moment.

A person usually floats along the current of life thinking that he advances this way. But the passive floating allows him to advance on the “inanimate” level. Suppose he is in a group, studying and taking part in different events and all this becomes routine for him. He is  under the influence of the general force field that advances in one general current all those who want to reach the goal, but this is called “Holy still,” and there is no personal advancement here yet. The personal advancement depends on a person’s daily exertion in order to spur himself and add flavor and acridity to this dish by himself: salt and pepper and other spices.

He must understand that he has no choice, and it is only possible to be spurred by these sharp situations into which he is thrown mercilessly, by being shown how opposite and how distant from spirituality he is. If he isn’t afraid of building up an appetite by these not-so-pleasant spices, he is spurred and can already perform some independent actions and not just float in the general current of his society. So we constantly have to exert ourselves, as it says: “You have labored and you found—believe,” which means that then it happens, and the Creator is revealed to a person. But this is only if a person exerts himself above the daily routine. This is a problem for us, since it is very hard to kick a habit. We are used to our daily schedule, the same hours and to the same filling that we receive according to a regular timetable, to the same amount of exertion; “a habit becomes a second nature.”

I have been exerting myself for many years and it seems that I am constantly on track. So I feel less satisfied and begin to complain: What is happening with me, why is there no result?” I don’t notice that I have been floating with the general current. Regarding the spiritual level, it is an inanimate body, a dead body that doesn’t move. This is because I haven’t exerted myself. Spirituality is revealed to a person according to his personal exertion, to the preparation of his own vessel, his desire. Of course, I am still moving and advancing a little, since I am part of some activities, but the important thing is that above the daily routine and the general current there should be my private clarification, by which a person constantly internally evokes his appetite, by hot spices and unpleasant questions.

He should constantly check and pressure himself by trying to hasten time, and he must really exert himself in order to fulfill the saying: “You have labored and you found, believe!”
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/12, Shamati #117

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Everything Is Within The Desire

Dr. Michael LaitmanThere is one created being and it is the desire to receive. This desire to receive receives different impressions from the Light that created it as “something from nothing.” This means that different phenomena are imprinted in the desire, which divide it into five parts” the root, the first part, the second, the third, and the fourth. The desire feels only what happens within these parts and the relations between them, and nothing more than that.

All the changes can take place only within this desire to receive, according to the way it feels its parts: to what extent they are connected, how great or how wide they are, etc. Accordingly, the reality perceived by the desire is stabilized and is made of what goes on inside the desire.

The desire can exist but not even feel itself, as if only the subconscious is active in it. It could be that it already feels itself as feeling reality. It could be that it feels itself as feeling reality and others too.

In addition, the desire can feel itself and others and they also feel themselves and others. Thus, it attributes to them some self-feeling and perception. Small children and undeveloped people cannot speak about this.

But one way or the other, everything takes place inside the desire to receive, and this desire has several levels of feeling.

On the level of “this world,” it feels its own existence and also his closeness to others or his distance from them. The image is depicted in it by the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. If we cut off these five senses, the desire will not feel anything.

Here we should emphasize the sense of touch—it isn’t just about touching something, but about a physical feeling of the self that is made of certain parts that come in contact with the air, etc. So if we cut off these five senses, the created being disappears. From the side, it seems that the desire exists, but it doesn’t feel anything, which means it has no feeling, no attainment, and actually no existence.

So all our work is actually within the desire. We cannot attain anything more than its five parts, but we can improve them. The main thing is to understand—what we feel is our feeling ourselves and the phenomena that go through us.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/15/12, “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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