Adhering Face To Face

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can I discover the game the Creator plays with me if I understand nothing and examine His behavior on the basis of my egoism?

Answer: In every moment of my life, I need to assess my state not by how it is perceived in my senses, but to think how the Creator acts within me, as the hand inside a glove or a puppet. This would mean that I connect myself with the Creator, the slave with the master, and want to reveal the force that acts in the slave. This upper force is the Creator.

I strive to reveal Him not from idle curiosity, as a researcher, and not out of greed, as a thief. I want to make sure that He acts in everything for my benefit. And if I think that something is not so, then I have to correct my attitude there. Thus, I come to adhesion with Him.

We need to be constantly inside the two principles simultaneously, “No one will help me but myself” and “There is none else besides Him.” I perform all the actions, and there is none else besides Him who is inside me. His controlling hand moves me from within and directs in everything.

But at the same time, while I obey Him in everything, I am like a horse that is as one with the rider, performing my work myself. I have many questions, thoughts, and doubts that toss me from side to side, but we with the Creator, I have to reach the state when we do not interfere with each other. He will manage me with His hand the way He pleases, and I will feel myself completely free as if He does not control me.

We find it hard to understand how this split is possible, but there is no distance between these two concepts. Hence you should understand what unity means. I act 100 percent on my own, and the Creator acts 100 percent on me, and at the same time, we do not interfere with each other and participate together in every action, ideally synchronized. This is called adhesion.

I am not giving up my senses and mind, but use them fully, all my critical judgment. I do not cancel myself so that the Creator does with me whatever He wants. Only then it is called adhering face to face.
[111780]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/8/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

Related Material:
United With The Creator
Face-to-Face With The Creator
Feeling The Creator Inside Me

To Die In Order To Give Life To The Next Level

Dr. Michael LaitmanHe who fatally strikes a man shall surely be put to death. If he did not do it by design, but it came about by an act of God, I will assign you a place to which he can flee. (The Torah, “Exodus,” 21:12-21:13)

Question: There is a great debate on the corporeal level with regard to killing a man and as to whether to sentence the one convicted of killing to death or not. Every state has its own laws. There are states that have a death penalty and there are states that don’t. The Torah says plainly, “One who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death.”

Answer: On the corporeal level you must first prove that a crime was committed intentionally, whether it was a premeditated murder and whether there is evidence that a person actually died of a certain blow, etc. Perhaps there was room for such cases in ancient times since it is an indication of the moral level of a society and that, in principle, shouldn’t happen and cannot be.

There were no such cases in which a person was forced to kill someone and as a result both the murderer and the victim had to be sentenced to death. In this case, there has to be such a big egoistic desire of the two sides so that the Creator should arrange this for them, and as a result they would both be put to death. If there was a death sentence once every seventy years, it was considered a horrible thing.

In spiritual terms, in our inner replica, it means that one desire nullifies another desire since they cannot coexist in their current form and complement one another in a spiritual act. Therefore they should both die.

One desire kills the other desire, nullifies it, and also disappears, and there seems to be a destruction of the two. Nothing disappears just like that. The mutual nullification of the two desires is making room, since they cannot coexist being so opposite from one another. On the next level they are born in the form of one unified desire and they grow together. This is a correction. We should understand that every action is an act of correction. It is not bad in any way as we perceive it egoistically. If on the corporeal level one person kills another by chance (as we perceive it egoistically), a certain action takes place and he is punished accordingly.

On the spiritual level, however, it refers to two opposite desires between which there cannot be a middle line and so they have to mutually nullify themselves. But this nullification is the beginning of the next level, of the middle line, and it grows from there.

These two desires are inside me so that I cannot destroy one without destroying the other. I want to kill the egoistic desire inside me and I do that with the help of the altruistic desire, which also disappears in this desire since it cannot exist if it isn’t compatible with the egoistic desire; the plus doesn’t exist without the minus.

There is an altruistic desire in contrast to every egoistic desire and the movement towards the middle line that is between them is always in such pairs. But it is impossible to connect in the middle line itself in this state, and so they destroy one another and turn into a vacuum that the next level stems from. This vacuum is physical; it is a physical state, a size, an object.

Question: Are you for or against a death penalty in the corporeal world?

Answer: I believe that we can correct the world: everyone! By the way, this is the law the Torah speaks about. If you can correct a certain desire then under no circumstances should you kill it. Death, murder, including our death is one of the actions of correction.
[111698]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/11/13

Related Material:
Difficult Spiritual Rules
A Contrast That Reveals The True Picture Of The World
“Thou Shalt Not Kill”

Two Levels Of Desire: Father And Daughter

Dr. Michael Laitman“Now if a man sells his daughter as a maidservant, she shall not go free as the slaves go free.” (The Torah, Exodus, 21:7)

The Torah is only about the correction of the desires. Slavery is when one desire belongs to another stronger desire that can correct it. So in ancient times people lived a collective, social life.

“My daughter” is the desires that I discover but which I cannot correct by myself. I cannot marry my daughter; I cannot give birth to the next levels of my offspring. So by developing my desires, I don’t connect to the desires called “daughter” as a father, I don’t come to her with my Masach (screen), since another Masach has to control her, another desire. This means that she belongs to another. I sell her so that she will belong to someone else.

Therefore it says that “she shall not go out as the menservants do,” since the female desire should belong only to Bina where it is.
[111626]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/11/13

Related Material:
A Person’s Private Desires
A Contrast That Reveals The True Picture Of The World
“Remember The Sabbath Day”

I Am Asking For My Brothers

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen everyone annuls his ego and tries to connect to the others, it means that everyone is trying to be incorporated in one another. Of course, we discover on the way that it is impossible to be incorporated and attain connection by ourselves, and then a prayer is born in us.

Everyone must reach a certain degree of bestowal upon others and be incorporated in them, but eventually, everyone must reach the level of “Jacob” that is called the middle line. Thanks to our collective efforts, we attain our root, the network that connects us all. This is called wanting to bestow upon Malchut from Yesod.

When we reach this state, we raise MAN, a prayer, so that the Surrounding Light will connect us correctly. Then, under the influence of Yesod on Malchut, we attain Keter, and then the Creator is revealed in our vessels.

In this process, we connect into one Sefira of Yesod from all the different Sefirot that represent each of us as everyone annuls himself. Through the general annulment, we reach Malchut and bestow upon it, and by that become a vessel for receiving the Light of Keter, which means that we reach the attainment of the level of Keter.

This process includes all of reality until the end of correction, but our mission now is for each of us to try to ascend above himself and be incorporated in others. By that, we are incorporated in the collective effort. This should be our preparation now before the convention. In this collective effort, we discover the prayer of many in which everyone is aware, understands, and feels the effort of the friends who want to connect, and I want to help them.

I feel what a great desire they have to connect in order to bestow upon the Creator. Therefore, as it is written, “For my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will now say: ‘Peace be within thee.’” This means that I ask for the friends so that they will reach the corrected vessel in which they will be able to bestow upon the Creator.
[111539]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/04/13, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
The Effort Beyond Human Power
Let’s Ask All Together!
A Common Prayer To Heal The Sick Soul

The Closed Door As An Excuse To Enter

Dr. Michael LaitmanEven if we know that there is only one force that acts in our lives, in spite of all this, if we see something we don’t like, experiencing something undesirable, we immediately forget that our vision, our thoughts, our desires, and our emotions are managed and shaped by the Creator. On the contrary, we think we are independent.

Some feeling, action, or thought that is exceptional and does not meet my expectations is sufficient for me to no longer be ready to link the event to the Creator. I can maintain the connection with Him only if I think well of Him, and conversely, the moment that I think ill of Him, this separates us; so I think about another force and attribute this to other people, to myself, to nature, but not to the one and only Source.

However, later I again return to thinking about the only power that acts within everything. This is how we learn to connect all states and everything to the Creator. He awakens various unpleasant states within us so that, despite or above the separation, we connect ourselves to Him so that we will not be dependent on our feelings, our understanding, but will want to connect to His emotion and power.

A person has no other correction, but to attribute all moments through which he now passes and in the future directly to the Creator. In this way, he justifies the creation because all worlds and all times were created only to give form within him to a feeling of the Creator. Everything is designed only to direct us toward discovery of the Creator.

We suppose that the present reality conceals the Creator from us. However, this is not so, for if we relate correctly to all that is happening, instead of a reality that conceals, we see a reality that reveals. Everything depends specifically on our relationship to this. It is precisely through the help of the powers of repulsion that we can advance.

Accordingly, the wisdom of Kabbalah divides people into the “wicked” and the “righteous.” Wherever the wicked one rejects, there the righteous one advances because he wants to justify that everything that happens to him is done for his advancement.

The main goal of a person is to reach the feeling of the reality of the Creator who fills everything, the single force that acts in the whole system, in the entire reality. It is up to a person to invest all his energy in this without involvement in anything else, without being confused by other goals.

To feel the Creator means to acquire the force of bestowal. So, it is not worthwhile to think about anything else because the reward for all of our efforts throughout life is that at every moment in this reality we will be privileged to be with the power of bestowal through which we begin to understand and feel the Creator. We see Him as the bestower.

In order for a person to approach this question correctly, he doesn’t exist alone. Instead, he is found within the framework of social systems that will help him. It is no accident that, throughout history, people gathered in villages, cities, and nations; and today are mixed in certain social units.

However, there exists one type of connection that we must build artificially. Unlike the other forms, it is not derived from the natural evolutionary process, yet without it, advancement is impossible. This is speaking of a unique society or group that, specifically within it, we need to see the changes through which we pass on the way to the Creator.

In addition to this, Rabash writes that, even though I see the faces of people around me, I must believe that, behind them, stands the Creator who does all these actions, compelling them to do what I am seeing. Someone smiles, cries, screams at me or laughs at me; it is not important. It is up to me to see the Creator in all this, presenting Himself to me in this form. In normal life, through the environment, I must penetrate through them to the source that runs them.

The Creator does everything, writes Rabash, but the person judges according to what his eyes see, according to behavior, according to faces, according to the laws of nature, and so on, and not according to his belief.

Being among billions of people, I must understand that everything that is happening, from the world news to the smallest events around me, are a presentation of the Creator toward me. That is what I need to understand and accept, to try to discover the good will behind the “curtains,” to bring me closer to Him, to discover Him in spite of all this “theater.”

Rabash continues and says that someone who sees the face of his friend is, in fact, seeing the Creator. Outside his body, only the Creator exists. So, accordingly, the person is a true created being.

Specifically, I am the created being and everything else is a part of the Creator who wants me to feel detached from His reality through this. However, besides me, only He fills everything. In this form, I see before me the Creator, the upper Light, and all the forms that He receives are drawn by my ego, dividing Him into parts with various shapes and sizes. In the end, they portray before me the various parts of nature: the still, the vegetative, the animate, or humans.

Other than this, the Creator fills everything, and, therefore, if I am lying to a friend, I am lying to the Creator. If I hurt a friend, I hurt the Creator. If I relate to the friends substantively, I can advance quickly to a correct comprehension. The entire world will be seen by me as whole, perfect and subject to the one higher guidance, that everything is directed toward bringing me to the Root.

If it is so, then there aren’t really any other people in the entire reality. There is only me and the Creator. All the other components act in the capacity of a transition link, a “buffer,” an adapter between us.

Therefore, Baal HaSulam writes that, before every action, I must say to myself that I am acting independently and success depends on me, and after the deed, I must realize and account for what happened. I must try to understand that everything was constructed from the start by the Creator. The result was known from the start. Therefore, it is up to me to accept everything wholeheartedly, for it was established this way from the start.

However, it is forbidden to declare that everything was known from the start and that there is no need to do anything. If we accept the conduct of the Creator without carrying out actions only because it is possible to attribute them to Him, then we don’t change. So, we see the same result in a different form, for if I am not changed, I sit with my hands folded or do something without connection to my independence and follow the “redirect” of the Creator, following, then I advance through suffering and blows.

However, if on the background of the conduct of the Creator, I dedicate time to acting on my own, and after that, I bring all that back to the “supreme authority,” to the Creator, if I act in order to equalize my participation to His participation, then in this way, I am changed. In a leap, I raise myself to a new level by the way of “I will hasten it.”

This is the entire difference. The world endures much suffering because it wants to change something on its own. The change is necessary, but the other half is lacking, and this is what we want to explain to humanity.
[107339]
From the Convention in New Jersey 5/11/13, Lesson 3

Related Material:
The Purpose Of Life Is The Revelation Of The Creator
How To Perceive The Material: Through The Heart Or Mind?
United With The Creator

Audio Version Of The Blog – 07.10.13

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
Download: MP3 Audio
[audio:http://files.kabbalahmedia.info/audio/eng_o_rav_2013-07-10_declamation_blog-rav_full.mp3 title=’10.7.13′]

The Deficiency Is The Reward

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How do I measure my readiness for the St. Petersburg convention?

Answer: According to the level of sufferings that you feel. After all, I suffer when I lack something important.

I see a fancy car in a store window, a shiny Rolls Royce that costs a million dollars, the type of car that attracts everyone’s attention on the street and stops the traffic. It is in front of me, I am captivated by it, and I feel that my life is meaningless without it. I ask people to help me raise a million dollars. I beg them to help me as much as they can…

I don’t sleep at nights, cannot eat, drink, or relax because of the image of the shiny vehicle; “I would rather die than live without the “Rolls Royce.” I suffer desperately when I see my dream car through the window that separates us.

So what should I do? Break the window? Start a revolution and split up everyone’s property? Rob a bank? I look for different solutions so I can purchase what I lack. It is because I have a strong feeling that this is the only thing that I lack.

It is according to such sorrow that we measure our preparation for the convention, but in our case it is not enough. I also need a point in the heart, the spark in the ego in relation to which I measure the goal that the friends and I are yearning for. The spark illuminates the sublime and wonderful goal and although I really long for it, I don’t want to blur or to erase it. On the contrary, I am sure that it will be mine and that I will attain it. Therefore, I am full of joy along with the feeling of sorrow.

The combination of sorrow and joy is the middle line which I have to form. So I measure my preparation according to the level of sorrow that I feel as a result of not having attained what I want. I check the sorrow that I feel in my heart, in my ego, from the point in the heart.

So before the St. Petersburg convention we put a great emphasis not on the greatness of the goal, but on the preparation that determines the reward. You will receive exactly what you have prepared.

In ordinary life we bring the vessel to a source of water and fill it. In spirituality it is different; there you receive exactly what you have prepared. Your vessel becomes the filling and you don’t ask for anything else. The yearning, the deficiency, the longing for the goal is what fills you. There aren’t any changes on the outside and nothing enters you; the deficiency becomes the reward. The preparation formats the deficiency in such a way that it becomes the filling.

What are these tricks? An empty vessel in return for our efforts?

No, it isn’t empty any more, it is actually full… this is bestowal.

Baal HaSulam speaks about that in Letter No. 19: “During the preparation, the beauty and grace appear and the essence of perfection that one yearns and longs for. However, at the time of correction, when ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord,’ then, ‘I shall see an opposite world,’ because only fear and longing are the essence of the desired perfection. Then one feels that during the time of preparation, one was lying to oneself.”
[111731]
From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/8/13, “They Shall All Know Me From the Least of Them to the Greatest of Them”

Related Material:
All We Need Is Love
Expecting The End Of Correction At Any Moment
Before The Dawn

Rage Slows Down The Digestion Of Food

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can you explain what Rambam says, “Never eat when you are angry?”

Answer: If a person is angry while he eats, the inner systems are activated and burn everything, thus leading to an inner short-circuit. So, the food is not digested. It is because a person adds additional interruptions into the digestion process. If he is angry during a meal, it is an interruption. The rage is digested into the blood and a person burns the food instead of absorbing it correctly.

Besides, in this state, he cannot chew and swallow the food correctly. It is hard to chew the right number of times. A person has to chew the food by an average of 32 times and, if not, then at least 14.

Who can chew the food 14 times while concentrating before swallowing the food? If we don’t do that, we swallow poison. Everything is mutually connected.

What is more, older people, women, children, and men need a different density of food, according to their health, their character, and their inner state.

If I am old and I have weak teeth, I need the right food since I cannot even chew green leaves with my teeth. This means that it has to be grinded first or be another type of food. Older people don’t need false teeth by nature. They need the right food that their stomach and the bodily systems need, a totally different type of food. It is impossible to serve an old person a piece of meat if he has no teeth. So, he needs soft and less condensed food that is cooked longer and grinded since his stomach cannot tolerate anything else.

Interestingly, primitive tribes consumed mainly boiled food. Modern civilized man believes that everything has to be juicy, green, natural and unprocessed, straight from the field, while different tribesmen used to process everything. What is more, they cooked the food in a way that seemed to destroy all the beneficial elements in it, but they lived a very long life, which is very interesting.
[106326]
From KabTV’s “Medicine of the Future,” 4/7/13

Related Material:
A Meal Is A Time Of Contemplation
Why Did We Climb Down From The Trees?
Balancing The Body Is Balancing The World

Why Did We Climb Down From The Trees?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: People say that we mustn’t consume stale food.

Answer: Modern man has lost this feeling. I know people who keep pets at home, and, if they eat the food, then the owner can eat it too. This is how it was during wars or in times of plagues. If a dog drank the water, it meant that people could drink it too. It is because a dog is an animal and a person is also an animal, but he lacks the sense that a dog has. He lost it long ago or only has remnants of these natural senses.

It isn’t even a sense of smell. A dog sees another dog, licks his urine and already knows everything about him, whether he should come in contact with him and when. We, on the other hand, need an entire laboratory, 500 tests, and we still don’t know anything about one another. A dog knows everything, whether another dog is the right mate for him or not, his character, and whether he is friend or foe. The animal determines the owner’s state of mind and his mood according to his smell, feeling his vibes. We have lost this ability long ago.

During the process of our evolution, we have drawn away from nature. We used to live in the trees once, and, like monkeys, we felt and knew everything that we needed. Then, we climbed down from the trees to the ground since we already needed protein food and not only vegetarian food in order to develop our brain. Eventually, we lost many functions that are necessary for a natural existence.

Animals have also lost these functions, especially those who live near us. Today, as a result of the worldwide environmental pollution, the poor animals mainly feed on what we throw away, so they also gradually lose their attributes.

Since the general program of creation is to bring man to a certain state when he will ascend the mental and spiritual levels up to the level of the Creator, everything is certainly aimed at this. Therefore, we certainly need to sacrifice something, which means to draw away from the animal state and to remain in it only in the nominal physical body and continue developing everything else toward the next state, the level of a “human being.”
[106322]
From KabTV’s “Medicine of the Future,” 4/7/13

Related Material:
A Meal Is A Time Of Contemplation
Rage Slows Down The Digestion Of Food
Balancing The Body Is Balancing The World

“Humans: The Real Threat To Life On Earth”

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from The Guardian): “Earth is home to millions of species. Just one dominates it. Us. Our cleverness, our inventiveness and our activities have modified almost every part of our planet. In fact, we are having a profound impact on it. Indeed, our cleverness, our inventiveness and our activities are now the drivers of every global problem we face. And every one of these problems is accelerating as we continue to grow towards a global population of 10 billion. In fact, I believe we can rightly call the situation we’re in right now an emergency – an unprecedented planetary emergency.

“We humans emerged as a species about 200,000 years ago. In geological time, that is really incredibly recent. Just 10,000 years ago, there were one million of us. By 1800, just over 200 years ago, there were 1 billion of us. By 1960, 50 years ago, there were 3 billion of us. There are now over 7 billion of us. By 2050, your children, or your children’s children, will be living on a planet with at least 9 billion other people. Sometime towards the end of this century, there will be at least 10 billion of us. Possibly more.

“We got to where we are now through a number of civilisation- and society-shaping ‘events,’ most notably the agricultural revolution, the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution and – in the West – the public-health revolution. …

“By this point initial signs of the consequences of our growth were starting to show. … There are now more than 7 billion of us on Earth. As our numbers continue to grow, we continue to increase our need for far more water, far more food, far more land, far more transport and far more energy. As a result, we are accelerating the rate at which we’re changing our climate. In fact, our activities are not only completely interconnected with but now also interact with, the complex system we live on: Earth. It is important to understand how all this is connected. …

“The only solution left to us is to change our behaviour, radically and globally, on every level.”

My Comment: It is gratifying to see how the awareness of the issues change: The cause is becoming more obvious—the human being; he must change his behavior! But how? There is no other method, but integral education and upbringing! This is because by doing so, a person attracts the influence of the upper Light on them, even if he has nothing to do with Kabbalah. By his actions to rise above his nature, he advances towards the properties of the Light. And thus, he attracts its influence to himself.
[111657]

Related Material:
Storm In The Network
The Planet On The Edge
Nature In Crisis