Why Is Our Time So Special?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why is dissemination in our time counted as real spiritual work?

Answer: The world has changed and has become ready for it. We were preparing ourselves for this time and could continue to just study and not go out to the public, remaining in a state of expectation like an engine in neutral. That is, the engine is running, but at a very low speed and idling. There is barely a zing of life in it.

In this state, we could exist until the end of our lives as the Kabbalists of the past did, but they lived in a different time when they could reveal all these properties with no connection with the lower. However, we are in a situation when we cannot realize our spiritual vessel without connection with people because it needs to communicate with the desires of the general public.

Therefore, without dissemination, we will achieve nothing besides what we already have. We could spend another five to ten years with little progress. We are developing, adding new groups, but this adds to us very little desire with which we could work and from which we would be able to reach the Creator. To do this, we need the desire of the degree lower in relation to us, not coming from the point of the heart: The desire that comes from integral connection.

If the connection had not been revealed that now is seen between all parts of humanity—broken and terrible, protectionistic, full of hatred, and rejection of others with the desire to use one another—we would not have been able to get from people their desire. Humanity has suffered throughout all of millennia not less than today and even much more. However, today, its desire acquired a new quality that comes from the corrupt network of connection between people.

That is why we can take their desire and raise them to the Creator. They already have what needs to be corrected! There is no need to correct the desire of any person. It is necessary to correct just the connection between them, the overall network. It was not revealed in the past, and that is why Kabbalists could not get closer to people. In our days, the crisis is manifested as a consequence of the broken network of connections revealed as the cause of the crisis. Thus, we can take the damaged connections between people and correct them.

We work only with these connections and not with the desires caused by a lack of money, health, family problems, children, and work. No matter what individual desires exist in everyone, the main thing is that, in our days, they are revealed in such a form that they cannot be solved by conventional methods. It was possible in the past, but not today.

We see that science, psychology, medicine, human relationships, parenting, and the attitude to work all falls apart because it is discovered that there is a corrupt network of connections between us. It is revealed as the cause of all evil. Kabbalists are aware of this, but, according to studies, ordinary science also is beginning to come to such conclusions.

That is why we can take this corrupt network and ask for its correction. That is what needs to be corrected because during the breaking, no vessel was broken. Its connections with others were broken. Therefore, all the corrections are made in your relationships with others. As it is written, “Don’t do unto others what you would not want done to you,” “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and “You shall love your Maker.” All corrections apply only to connections.
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From the Preparation for the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/15/13

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From Out Of The Gloom – To The World Of Truth

Dr. Michael LaitmanThis seems paradoxical, but if we look at this world from the spiritual world, there is nothing more natural than the connection of everything into one whole and with the Creator. This is a single, stable system that is found in harmony, in permanent balance, in an ideal state, where everything in it is found in interaction, fulfilling the others and being fulfilled by the others. This system becomes an absolutely healthy body, physically and mentally.

Information, matter, energy, perception, consciousness, all this exists in absolute harmony. Therefore this system is eternal: There is no concept of time, there are no changes. In other words, there is eternal life and events take place with regularity specifically to reveal the infinite depth of this connection.

The connection itself is permanent, the system is permanent, and the Light is found at absolute rest and fills the entire creation. We are found in it in constant motion from the smallest fulfillment to the largest. And the most important ecstasy is in the perception of the harmony and wholeness of this system, and this is what is called perception of the Creator.

Therefore our world is comprehended from there as a small, ugly world, which exists without choice, because the Creator obliges it to exist even though a creature seems so despicable that it has no right to exist. This creature exists specifically for this, that by denying his depravity, he will rise and attain eternity and wholeness. Yet it’s difficult to do this because we don’t see anything against this depravity.

But if we were to see this, we would lose free choice, and with all our strength we would run only there, no matter what. We would slam with our whole body into a wall, a barrier that separates between us, just to get there or to disappear.

For this we were given the concealment so that from ourselves we would build the model of the world to which we aspire, with a link between us, with our relationship with one another, to ourselves, in the relationship of our general group to all of humanity, to the still, vegetative, and animate nature.

We crave it in this world, imagining it as a kingdom, like in a children’s game, and try to create it among us, in spite of all the things that are given to us here. We want to enter this seemingly unnatural, imaginary state; if we understand how far this is from our present existence, we see this is contrary to all logic, to our nature, which is to say, our intelligence; this needs to be something absolutely different.

And continually humanity tries to understand how, in spite of it all, it is possible to do something, but in the end something worse results. The ego still crushes us and shows us that we have perhaps achieved what we wanted, until we discover the significance of all that is happening: For what does existence like this need to be?

You see, if we look from the side, our existence seems depraved and absolutely lacking in meaning and purpose. It follows that people exist without a choice, captive, where they suffer and flee from this suffering all the time, encounter more suffering and again flee. And all this is only to begin to imagine another existence, something that is truly worth it, for which it is worthwhile to live, and not regret the fact that you are alive.

When we imagine this state, we gradually begin to feel that apparently it truly exists; otherwise, how would we imagine it? And this state apparently exists not only hypothetically but truly. However, it wants us to truly aspire to it. I must aspire to it in a form where I will feel myself inwardly and emotionally within it. And then I begin to feel some kind of help, inspiration, and illumination. I begin to see that there is a purpose to all this.

Precisely like this, Adam discovered this system 5773 years ago. From that day, we run our Kabbalistic calendar, from that moment when Adam HaRishon (first man) discovered the Creator in our world. And after that began the transfer of knowledge from generation to generation; more people began to be included in this who also felt a lack of meaning in their existence.

But that same problem always remained: How can I develop another world, a correct and true world within my small and threatening world? People stood facing that problem all the time. It’s necessary to create an image, to play with this system, to play in the true world.

We always forget this, and this will continue until we create together a state like this, a link like this, a system of relationships like this, which will be just about identical to the higher world and it will only be required to realize it clearly, and this will be done through a stroke of the Upper Light. But until we do all that we can in order to be in such a state as this, we will not reach it. The moment that we do everything in order to create this other world within our gloom, it will appear immediately. The Light will make it true and we will discover ourselves within it.

We understand that there is no choice but to reach true and clear unity and to create the conditions, the contact, the mutual relationships like these, that will be just about equal to the higher system, full of love and bestowal, mutual inclusion, understanding, support, and responsibility. And the link needs to be like this, that the person, as a separate entity, disappears. He doesn’t exist, and cannot exist.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Three” 7/14/13, Lesson 6

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Connecting The Entire World To The Creator

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “A Handmaid That Is Heir to Her Mistress:” Hence, the worlds have been divided into internality and externality, where each world contains illuminations suitable to operate in slow development. And these are called “the internality of the world.”

The system we are in is divided into internality and externality. This division relates to the Lights and the vessels, both to the direct and to the opposite correlation between them depending on if we speak about the corrected vessels or the corrupt ones.

Accordingly, we should understand what it means for us after the preparation in the spiritual system and the creation of the corporeal system. It is actually also a spiritual system, but we perceive it as the current fictitious world. I discover that I exist in a certain reality with people and the still, vegetative, and animate nature  around me. It is as if everyone lives on his own here, moving around independently, operating and influencing others. After I reveal all that, I must attribute myself, together with the whole picture that is depicted inside me to one cause, to one source, to one goal, to a simple reality in which there is none else besides Him, and that He is good and benevolent. The point that is created as “something from nothing” remains in me only in order to determine that everything else is Him.

We must connect everything that is outside that point to the perception of the upper, the Creator. This is our work, and everyone who feels that he has a point in the heart—”something from nothing” and who feels different from the eminent—participates in it.

The work is divided into two parts:

  1. Strengthening the point in the heart by connecting the points that can be connected to it for the sake of the spiritual goal. These are the members of the group, my friends along the spiritual path, who actually are parts of my soul, of my point in the heart.
  2. In addition, there are other parts that are not directly connected to this goal. They don’t feel “something from nothing,” but rather, “something from something,” and they don’t ask complicated questions that stem from the point in the heart, from the opposite form. They live their lives and don’t feel any deficiency but that. I also need to connect them to my work according to the type and size of the desires that are revealed inside them.

Eventually, I connect all of reality: the whole desire to receive that is before me—that is at my disposal, inside me, no matter how you put it—to the attribute of bestowal and love called the Creator. It seems that I correct the world, but in fact, I fulfill my private correction. This is because there is nothing in the world but one man and one Creator. A person is the point of “something from nothing” that operates in order to bring it back to “something from something,” everything that seems separate from it.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/15/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 08.21.13

Preparation to the Lesson

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Meaning of Conception and Birth,” Lesson 11

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The Book of Zohar — Introduction, “A Handmaid that Is Heir to Her Mistress

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 08.20.13

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
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Connections In The Crystal Network

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen we disseminate we reach different organizations, prisons, etc., and we organize roundtables where we discover different problems in the network of connections. It is the correction of the network of connections and nothing more than that. We discover the place of the shattering and its intensity and ask for its corrections and not for anything for our own private desires. Our prayers are not for a particular person but are about the connection between people, and therefore it is called a “prayer of many.”

It is impossible to ask for one individual; you will not be heard this way. After all, a vessel is formed between two people. Two people is the minimal amount; the desire to create the right connection between two is a spiritual vessel.

I cannot pray to the Creator to do good to me. I must ask for someone else, for the well being of another. If I pray for him, it means that I correct my connection with him. Then it goes through me, and I if I am totally focused on him, I reach spiritual revelation. The person I asked for will feel good since he will get rid of his problems and I will feel good because of the revelation of the Creator.

I become GE and therefore my fulfillment is in my intention, which serves as the actual filling. The other person is AHP and his fulfillment is in the revelation of the Light.

The only important thing is the network of our connections. In our world it seems that the actual components of the crystal network are important, that people are actually those who bear the desires. This isn’t true; the spiritual desire is actually the connection between them. This is what we have to focus on.

So when we connect with the public, the connection with a person is the most important thing. This is what we have to explain to them eventually, one way or another, so that they will understand that if the connections between us are good and corrected, we will be filled and feel abundance between us. No matter how he attains this, a person will feel good. Everything he wants will be fulfilled. Later his desires will change from a desire for corporeal fillings to desires that are increasingly more spiritual.
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From the Preparation to the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/15/13

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Connection Between The Groups Is The Correction Of The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Lately, we are witness to Europe and Russia beginning to connect. Also, here in the convention, we truly are feeling this. How can we connect all of our sparks together?

Answer: Understandably, that would be remarkable. If this were possible, then this would be the materialization of our dream. The dream would have become reality. Then, all of our friends would be able to rise above their mentality, above the historical separation, above the contradictions and even above the hatred, and the main thing, above the Babylonian repulsion, above the difference in languages. If they were ready to rise above “Ancient Babylon” that now is being revealed more and more among us, then there would not be any more need to change anything.

Why is the global crisis happening? It indicates to us the pre-Babylonian civilization that existed in Babylon before the general separation: the division, the disagreements, and people stopped understanding each other. In general, this is not talking about languages, not about philology, but about the disappearance of mutual understanding between people.

What is this global world? The global world is being revealed as a system that existed before the Babylonian separation. This system was divided and now is connecting again, and motility called a “crisis” is taking place.

In ancient Babylon, the crisis advanced from a state of wholeness to a shattered state, and with us, after three thousand five hundred years, the movement is from the shattered state to the whole state. The world is returning to itself to its source.

If our groups were able to connect with the help of various mechanisms (helping mechanisms, virtual and more), then without a doubt, this would be remarkable. However, for the Europeans, it is very difficult to reach connection—very difficult! Europe is the most sensitive place with a rich history and a multitude of painful issues, with general, mutual hatred, whereas if we could rise above all this… This is extremely difficult. It is necessary to go through huge “pitfalls.”

I very much hope that the Americans will become an example because our students, our friends from the Education Center, are together with us. They have good organizers faithful to us. As of this moment, they are working together with the friends on the gradual connection, on the approach toward us.

If this truly will begin to be realized, we will feel an intense spiritual push forward. Perhaps this will become an example to Europe, and then they will also begin to depart gradually from the crisis.

Throughout history, it happened that in places where the Kabbalists once lived, the economy, the trade, and the culture always prospered. However, the moment that they were expelled from the country, everything died. Therefore, I hope very much that, first of all, this will lead these nations to prosper.

However, the most important thing is that this is the very core of correction, when we, or at least those who are engaged in the science of integral connection, will be able to realize it together. And in the nations of Europe and in a number of states in the United States, people are learning alone or in solitary groups who don’t want to connect.

Do you think that this can be realized in a different way? People still don’t hear, but I hope that they will hear. We need to write about this subject more clearly, more openly, so that everyone will see where this leads. Do not wait until they guess it is the correction of the world. The connection between our groups is the correction of the world.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Three” 7/14/13, Lesson 5

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Back To Love

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I recognize the secret of dissemination and it is very simple. It is up to us to radiate happiness as a result of the connection between us. People will be specifically attracted to this, not to the suffering that pushes them away, but will be attracted to the happiness that we must disseminate. How do we maintain the dissemination of happiness all the time?

Answer: I will tell you what I did. I was sitting, writing books. I worked on the archive that was left to me from Rabash. It is up to each one to feel his mission. I reached Rabash when he was 75. I didn’t know how many years were left for him to live, but I knew that it was up to me to get as much as possible from him, and if I were not to get it, then all the knowledge that he had, everything, would go down the drain. I had the feeling that I was obliged to absorb and to record everything on audio tapes, to write everything down that he had. It could be that this was conceit or even audacity, but this held me.

I did not aspire to be number one after him. Even now, I don’t feel that way, I don’t like this very much since this only makes life complicated. I felt that I was obliged to receive, to drink from this well to the end, so that this knowledge would not disappear. Instead, it would be disseminated to everyone. This was the feeling of my mission. This really held me.

More than this, I have nothing to add. Do what Rabash wrote: connection, the happiness of the goal, a feeling of need and of having been chosen for a great and difficult mission.

Think about it. What is it to be parents? On the one hand, you are happy to see them developing, growing, and on the other hand, you are very concerned about them. Certainly, you want them to grow to be more successful, but what if this is not so? How disappointed and frustrated would you be? And much more so than with your own lack of success.

That is to say, your concern is in others. They give us an example of natural love on the animate, most primitive level. If, as a reaction, they also love you, then this love for you is much stronger, and the sorrow, the suffering of the loved one, is much more terrible and tragic, than your personal suffering, for love amplifies all sensations 620 times.

Therefore, if we would have a feeling of love between us, then the world simply would “explode with jealousy” because of our happiness. Therefore, the entire secret is always to return to love. So, if we relate this way to humanity, they suddenly will feel what kind of people we are and what is happening between us. However, even now, when they see us together, they wonder about the meaning of the strange “superhuman” relationships that there are between us.
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From the St. Petersburg Convention “Day Three” 7/14/13, Lesson 5

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End Of The Seven Years Of Want

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The end of the exile should signify the end of all our suffering, so why do we reach total emptiness and bankruptcy?

Answer: We all know that the exile begins from the seven years of satiety and there are the seven years of lack that end in the darkness in Egypt, in terrible plaques. Who receives these blows? It’s my body, my “Pharaoh.” This is called bankruptcy when, while in my last ten Sefirot in the last ten plagues, I feel total despair which totally detaches me from my desire to receive.

Then I am ready to come out of Egypt, to escape from there. This is bankruptcy, since when I came to Egypt there was food and life there and it was good, you could find everything you wanted there! At first Egypt was like the land of Israel to the sons of Joseph, the land of milk and honey; Joseph was the ruler of Egypt and all the Egyptians worked for the Jews, for the children of Israel.

I am in a state in which the ego provides me with different pleasures; I am glad that I have found the wisdom of Kabbalah, meaning that I have found a means to receive the upper pleasure and to succeed in life. Before I had nothing and now I hope to receive everything in this world and all the upper worlds and to conquer everything. This is what a person who comes here to study feels; it’s as if he has found a great treasure that can fill all his desires to receive. It isn’t by chance that it is called the wisdom of Kabbalah (the wisdom of “reception” in Hebrew).

But when I gradually advance and participate in the collective work, I feel as if the seven years of lack and bankruptcy have begun. Where is the promised pleasure? Where is the attainment, the understanding, the feelings, the control? There is nothing! A person deteriorates more and more. So we see that “a thousand enter a room to learn and only one comes out,” the one who can bear it all.

The others flee since there are other pleasures on the outside. But now we see that there is nothing on the outside either, so everyone will eventually return. We are ready and glad to receive everyone. It’s clear that a person flees since the seven years of famine have begun. After all, he doesn’t understand that he has to receive the new world in new vessels, and if he hasn’t prepared these vessels, then what can he feel?

The seven years of famine come to an end in final bankruptcy, in the ten plagues of Egypt, when I don’t see that I succeed in anything. I despair because of the powerlessness I feel in all the ten forms of my relationships with the world: in education, in health, in security, in economics, in finance, in the desires for food, sex, and family.

There is nothing I can revive my soul with; all the sources of pleasure have dried up. Then I come to the conclusion that I have to flee from my egoistic desire and to leave the system that forces me to think only about how to fill myself. After all, there is no way anything can enter my mouth according to this method, I need to find a new method.

Then I escape from Egypt, cross the Red Sea, which is inner feelings, my understanding, and my consciousness. I escape from my ego, draw away from it; I am scared and in the dark, but I already understand that there is nothing I can do in Egypt anymore…then help comes from above and takes me out of there, but I am prepared for it.

Then, from the phase of Mt. Sinai onward, I begin to take on another form. This is the path we have to go through now with the whole world. Everything we have done before was just the preparation, meaning the correction of a small part of the desire: GE, Israel. Now we have to do the same thing with the whole world.

The whole world will have to go through and is already going through the same state that Israel experienced with the exile in Egypt. The whole world gradually goes down to Egypt. The seven fat years of prosperity of the American dream when everyone thought that all humanity will develop, conquer space, and cross every border are over. Now we are gradually folding all our programs and don’t want anything anymore. This is called the “seven years of famine.”

The ten plagues of Egypt that will hit the world are approaching and we already see the beginning of an ecological disaster. Then there will be problems with oil and gas supply and with viruses and plagues if we don’t succeed in softening these attacks. The blows will come no matter what, but we can soften them by approaching them ourselves. If we operate knowingly, consciously, we can indeed soften them.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/02/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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“US National Debt Is Actually $70 Trillion”

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from PressTV): “A new study by an American economist concludes that the U.S. federal debt is mind-bogglingly larger than it is officially said to be. The study by James D. Hamilton of the University of California, San Diego, says the U.S. government’s off-balance-sheet liabilities are six times the size of the official debt or $70.1 trillion. …

“But the $12 trillion federal debt is only the tip of the iceberg because the figure is not inclusive of a number of off-balance-sheet commitments and liabilities.

“But the officially reported debt is only one respect in which current policy has left a burden for future taxpayers. In addition the government has made a number of implicit and explicit commitments that are not included in the net debt figures just reported, but which could potentially require much larger adjustments in future spending or taxes than those associated with paying interest on the official debt itself. The biggest items in this category come from Social Security and Medicare which, if current policy is maintained, will require enormous sacrifices from future taxpayers.”

My Comment: Generally, it is not so important because no one will pay anything to anyone and is not going to pay, as they say, a war will delete anything, or vice versa, a transition to new relationships through the method of integral education will lead us to an agreement “to start everything anew. ”
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