What Does The Future Of Israel Depend On?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You are well aware and have a good understanding of the situation in Israel’s society. On one hand it represents a society of Torah, and on the other hand it is a civilization of high technology, while it also exists in an unfriendly surrounding. How do you see the process of this society’s development? Will we manage to solve anything in this small area of the world?

Answer: I am sure that the future of Israel and its fate has no connection with technologies, science, industry, banking business, army, weapons, or the relationship between us and our neighbors.

I am sure that everything depends only on the ability of Israel’s society to restructure itself according to the new requirements for humanity. Everything depends on the degree of its unity, equality, harmony, and how much people will be able to connect into one integral system. Then they will start living in harmony with the surrounding nature. Practically, the whole goodness which can manifest in humanity and society depends on this.
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From KabTV’s “Global Crisis,” 3/19/2013

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A Sign Of A Solid Covenant

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is special about a person’s work in preparing himself for a descent; what helps him to keep the covenant he has made prior to the descent?

Answer: I depend on the Light that Reforms that must take care of me. So I need to have an absolute whole desire for this Light to sustain my complete dependence on it.

I want to be above my discernments and my feelings, but at the same time keep my eyes open. There is a certain duplicity here, a paradox. On the one hand, I want to understand, to know, and to feel everything in my reality, in my state, all the discernments in that state, and on the other hand, no matter what happens in this state and no matter how much I clarify and connect all my discernments, I have to eventually adhere to the Creator on top of this data.

This means that I want to grow above my understanding, my feeling, and see everything through my ego: above it, below it, and in it, in three discernments. I only ask that all this will not break our covenant, that I will attain devotion for the Creator despite everything, and will be filled with gladness; gladness is the right sign of our solid covenant.

If I don’t burst with such gladness, then it means that I don’t have a covenant with the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/17/13, Writings of Rabash

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Love The Lord Your God With All Your Heart

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe goal of the created being is to enjoy all the pleasures that the Creator wants to give him, but what pleasures are we talking about? The Creator cannot give the created being less than His own level since, otherwise, it isn’t considered bestowal and love. The Creator’s attitude toward the created being is determined by the law of “Love thy friend as thyself.” He demands this from you, but you have the right to ask Him, in response, whether He acts according to this law or not. If He does, then there must be such a law in nature.

This law does exist! It is the attitude of Keter to Malchut, to the created being, “Love thy friend as thyself.” Malchut must reach the same attitude of “Love thy friend as thyself” by the Returning Light. This is called mutual bestowal, mutual love. Everything is very simple.

The Creator is whole, He is total love and bestowal and thus, He gives creation all this. Therefore, His attitude is called the four phases of the Direct Light.

However, the created being cannot relate to the Creator in the same direct way and acquire the same form since he only receives from the Creator in the four phases of the Direct Light. In order to relate to the Creator in the same way, the created being must go through the entire process of development all the way to the end of correction.

After all, it is about attitude. The problem isn’t receiving pleasure from the Creator, but is about how I feel it and how I repay Him. There is no problem in receiving pleasure. Malchut of Ein Sof (Infinity) received it and it also led to the “first restriction.” The Creator gave it a spark while it was still in phase one of the Direct Light, and it felt that it was obligated to bestow back. It doesn’t want to only receive.

Phase two stems from phase one since otherwise everything would end in phase one. It turns out that the problem is not to receive from the Creator, but the feeling that you must repay Him and you have nothing to give Him! How can you repay Him? You cannot give Him back the Light that you received from Him since it is as if you return to the host the refreshments that He prepared for you so that He will eat it. It is impossible since the Creator Himself stands before you.

He shows you His good attitude and it is revealed as the pleasure that fills all your desires, but what do you value about it? Is it His attitude toward you? Is it His love or the pleasure itself, regardless of the Creator? Suppose I bring you something that you really love and you reject it. Do you reject it because of the food itself or because I bring it to you with such love that you cannot accept it?

If a waiter in a restaurant brought you that dish, you would accept it without hesitation and would enjoy its taste. However, you refuse to accept it from me since you cannot repay my attitude, my love. You restrict yourself with regard to the love. You cannot bear it since it requires mutuality.

You must calculate the love since this is what causes you shame. You don’t feel any shame with regard to the food since you think that, because the Creator has created you, He must feed you and fill you. It is obvious. However, you cannot return His love! So, starting from the “first restriction” onward, you look for a way to cope with this love, examine what this love is, how it is revealed, where it comes from, what is the connection between this love and the pleasure you feel in your desire, and what is its part in all the Light of NRNHY that fills the vessels.

When you reach a state in which you think that you can receive in order to bestow in the world of Nekudim, you are shattered, and this entire shattering is actually because of the love, because you couldn’t take it into account. You still don’t understand its root since it belongs to the Creator. Its love comes to you from Him, and that is His feeling. It evokes in you certain reactions that you don’t understand.

You don’t understand what this feeling means and why you suddenly feel shame, discomfort, and cannot bear it to such an extent that you begin to fight with Him, mainly in order to destroy the feeling of unpleasantness that you feel because of His love toward you.

The shattering of the vessels allows us to establish the hatred against the love, so “Mt. Sinai” was the starting point of the nation. We wouldn’t be able to begin working on it without the preparation in the exile in Egypt and the wandering in the desert. Therefore, as it is written, “Love the Lord thy God with all your heart,” which is the whole essence of the connection.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/17/13, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 05.23.13

Preparation to the Lesson

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Writings of Baal HaSulam The Mutual Guarantee,” Lesson 16

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Talk About Tens

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 05.22.13

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
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Weekly Torah Portion – 05.22.13

The Book of Zohar, Weekly Torah Portion, Selected Excerpts

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Why Is The USA Falling So Fast?

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (from Washington’s Blog): “… Jared Diamond’s book’s, : Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, studies the collapse of civilizations throughout history, and finds:

“‘Civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power…

“‘One of the choices has depended on the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible but before they reach crisis proportions …’”

My Comment: That is, perhaps it is not too late for the entire Western world to choose a peaceful solution to the problem: to begin to unite with us before the terrible sufferings compel us to do so.

“PhD economist Marc Faber states:

“‘How [am I] so sure about this final collapse?

“Of all the questions I have about the future, this is the easiest one to answer. Once a society becomes successful it becomes arrogant, righteous, overconfident, corrupt, and decadent … overspends … costly wars … wealth inequity and social tensions increase; and society enters a secular decline.’ …”

My Comment: Clearly, it is a pessimistic view of the future. Humanity will not be able to make a reasonable decision—to begin to unite in order to eliminate all the conflicts between itself and nature by their similarity to the integral system of nature. The easiest thing is to do nothing and allow nature to push us towards the necessary change by its own means, that is, by force.

“…18th century Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler: The average life span of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years progressing from “bondage to spiritual faith … to great courage … to liberty … to abundance … to selfishness … to complacency … to apathy … to dependence and … back into bondage …”

My Comment: The USA is already in the decline phase. But because it is not just egoistic linear development, like throughout our history, but the rise to a new level of universal integral dependence, of unification, similarity to unified Nature, the period of decline is not necessary. As soon as we recognize our next state, we will be able to make the transition to it outside the axis of historical time by having accelerated our evolution through the awareness of a new need.
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Past Generations Were Cleverer Than Us

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from The Telegraph): “The Victorians achieved so much because they were cleverer than us, a new study suggests.

“Reaction times – a reliable marker of general intelligence – have declined steadily since the Victorian era from about 183 milliseconds to 250ms in men, and from 187ms to 277ms in women.

“The slowing of our reflexes points to a decrease in general intelligence equivalent to 1.23 IQ points per decade since the 1880s or about 14 IQ points overall, researchers said.

“Actual IQ scores from different decades cannot be directly compared because people today enjoy better teaching, health and nutrition which would help improve their results, the scientists explained.

“But the reaction times signify that the genetic component of general intelligence – which leads to the type of creativity and invention typical of the Victorian era – has been dwindling over the past century.

“Our declining intelligence is most likely down to a ‘reverse’ in the process of natural selection, he explained. The most intelligent people now have fewer children on average than in previous decades, while there are higher survival rates among people with less favorable genes.”

My Comment: Since humanity is bound to transition to a new integral development, during which not the earthly egoistic, but the altruistic (integral, analog, collective) mind will develop in us, the decline in intelligence points to the imminent transition to a new level of consciousness.
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Completing The Work Of The Present Level

Completing The Work Of The Present LevelQuestion: Would it be worthwhile for us to change the form of the conventions gradually and to do them not for those who have been learning the integral method but for those who don’t study and want to hear about it? Immense efforts and means are invested in preparation for conventions. Might it be preferable to invest in attracting people who are not familiar with the integral method?

Answer: Certainly, it would be nice to use all our means for world dissemination. However, it is impossible to turn to a person and say: “Let’s set up a virtual convention, and the effort and resources that could be invested in a physical convention, we will invest in dissemination.”

Question: Why not? It is certainly very nice to see like-minded people with whom you are familiar at the conventions. However, these events gather so many people now that it is more and more difficult to meet people whom we know. So, our experiment to create a big family where everyone knows everyone else essentially becomes a fantasy. Is it worthwhile to waste our resources and efforts on this?

Answer: You might be right. I feel that we are going in this direction, but every paradigm must finish its work. So, I hope that what is being conceived now will ultimately come into being: a virtual world system of integral education that will not require constant meetings.

However, today, when I come to Europe, for example, and hundreds of students arrive from thirty countries, for them, this is not just a meeting with me. This is an organization. They communicate with each other, regroup, and agree on how to disseminate, what must be done next, and so on. Along with this, I try to give them the opportunity to connect, to mold an organized center for information and publicity by themselves.

The power that is created through our communication is what is called the wisdom of the group that today already has been established through experiments.

We are dealing with physical values, not imaginary ones. When people gather and organize some kind of society among themselves, a great power and potential appears, which is greater than the mere sum. This is natural and scientifically proven.
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From KabTV’s “The Global Crisis” 3/19/13

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Reaching Out To Leaders

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If the people making decisions today understood that the main thing is being acknowledged by society rather than having power over it, then perhaps it would be easier to introduce integral upbringing. Possibly, we should first educate such people? After all, leaders can change everything from above, and from below it would still be a revolutionary way even if we begin to teach people.

Answer: I think it will come from both sides. We need to educate everyone without exception, try to reach out to everyone. We have to explain to ordinary people who are using the Internet on a regular basis that the next state of humanity is obligatory, instilled in us by nature, and that we are pushed towards it from behind, as they say, using the rod to compel into happiness. If they understand this and move forward, it will be easier and faster for them to achieve a good state.

Once this feeling penetrates society, it will be simultaneously accepted by the leaders. On the other hand, there is hope that somehow, we will nonetheless reach the leaders through respectable people who are involved in the integral method. Their knowledge, their contact with us may later be passed to those who are in power. That is why the leaders will hear this directly, or through one of us, or through society.

We are not in favor of destroying the existing systems. We are not if favor of turning the pyramid upside down so that a housewife starts governing a country. We have already seen what comes out of that.

On the contrary, energetic, serious people who, due to their work, intelligence, and good egoistic desire, have reached the heights, are also able to see what is really worth aspiring to. And they can realize themselves in this direction just as well, even with a greater success. So, I wish them only the best in their rise and leadership over all of us.

I personally do not have these skills or aptitude. I understand what should happen, but I would gladly offer the organization of this process to our world leaders.
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From KabTV’s “The Global Crisis” 3/19/13

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