Choosing The Strong In Spirit

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If the majority of the people suddenly told you that you were right about everything, would you regard it as a bad sign?

Answer: If the majority came to me, I would try to draw away from them and I hope I would have enough strength to do so. Never promise yourself anything until the end of correction.

The more you are criticized, the more slander people publicize against you, the safer you are and more protected along the spiritual path. This means that judgments and accusations, slander, and students who leave, only make you stronger. This is how the gradual clarification of the spiritual path takes place.

The more we advance, we grow fewer and fewer in quantity. Great circles will be created around us and they will spread in waves, but the group itself will remain small, only several hundred people. The Sanhedrin was 120 people, and one leader. I believe that this is what will also happen in the future.

In any case, there is the constant washing of the golden sand, the search for the rare individuals. The gold mines that remain, that is, those who join us.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/24/13

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Two Ways Of Revealing The Point In The Heart

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What does it mean not to place a stumbling block before a blind person?

Answer: It means that you shouldn’t tell a student what he cannot yet overcome.

It isn’t about the masses, but about students, although the general public also slowly catching up.

The difference is that individuals who have a point in the heart advance along the straight path by revealing this point individually, while the public follow their own path and discover the point in the heart among them. So our path is independent of the others and we only create the influence of a small environment around us. The public, however, advance towards the Creator (the attribute of love and bestowal) by the connection between them.

Question: Is there any illumination coming out of this point in the heart?

Answer: It depends on the connection. In case of the general population, the point in the heart is created in the center of the circle, while in our case it is in each one of us, and these points connect in the center of our circle. So in our case the movement is individual, in a group, while for them it is only in a mass, in a group and not personal. Therefore, we have to educate and serve them.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/24/13

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India Is Threatened By The Most Severe Crisis In 20 Years

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from Bloomberg): “India’s rupee sank to a record on concern recent steps to steady the currency will prompt foreigners to rethink investment plans amid speculation the U.S. will pare stimulus next month. Bonds and stocks plunged.”

My Comment: The specter of the crisis in all its forms, not just financial and economic, is spreading around the world until it “processes” the entire humanity to the state of necessity to completely review human attitudes towards ourselves and the world. But we, the carriers of the method of integral education, must help the world peacefully and quickly discover the cause of the phenomena and the only way of overcoming it through integral education.
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Heat In The 21st Century

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from NBC News): “The type of heat waves that wilt crops, torch forests — and kill people — are expected to become more frequent and severe over the next 30 years regardless of whether humans curb emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, according to a new study. …

“Since the 1950s, the frequency of these events has ‘strongly increased and right now they cover about 5 percent of the global land area,’ Dim Coumou, a climate scientist with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, told NBC News.

“If we look at the near-term, up to 2040, we see that this increase will continue and that by 2040 we will see about 20 percent of the land area affected, so about another fourfold increase compared to today,” Coumou said.

“If levels of carbon dioxide continue to increase in the atmosphere as they are today, the researchers find heat extremes might cover 85 percent of the planet’s land area by 2100.

“What’s more, even hotter — so called five-sigma events, which are virtually non-existent today — would affect 60 percent of the global land area, according to the research.

My Comment: It is not the human technological activity that creates the impact on the climate but humans general egoistic attitude to their own kind and nature, and only by changing ourselves, will we be able to create any climate of our choice!
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Working Or Philosophizing?

Dr. Michael LaitmanSpirituality is not attained by work in the mind, as it says: “wisdom among the nations – believe, Torah among the nations – don’t believe.” This means that the Light that Reforms is not among them. Therefore they are called the nations of the world and not Israel yet. This is what the whole debate is about: Who attains the Creator and who doesn’t? What is attainment?

To the extent that we acquire vessels of bestowal and sense in them, we attain the Creator, which means the phenomena that take place in our vessels of bestowal. It is impossible to attain anything else, except for a feeling in our vessels. The early simple desire to receive expands and acquires a new order. Before, it was scattered to many contradictory pieces that felt themselves as Israel and the nations of the world, relatives and distant strangers.

All this belonged to my desire to receive, but it seemed like a whole world that is around me in different forms. My role is to connect all this into one, to collect all the pieces and attach them to me by treating them with love. I have to understand that it was all given to me in order to correct myself, my point in the heart, by which I acquire the right intention towards all my enemies, those who hate me and foreigners, as I begin to perceive them as parts of my soul.

It is inside me that I have to find the right attitude towards them and then to correct them. If I perform such a correction in my inner attitude, I see that everything works out. All the many enemies and my problems are only a replica of my inner state. It is my attitude by which I divide all of reality into the land of Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Babylon, and different distant countries and nations, which means that they are all the levels of my desire: the still, vegetative, and animate nature, and the speaking.

Once there was one desire, the world of Ein Sof (Infinity), and now it is divided into many parts, which feel that they are distant from one another and hate one another. All this can be connected into one form, and this is the whole correction of man and the world as one whole.

All this can be realized only if I demand correction. The whole difference is whether I philosophize about it using my mind or in contrast to what I see and the repulsion that I feel by all these parts, in faith above reason, as parts of my soul, although they seem so distant and even hated. So I begin to get closer to spirituality, working above my desire in the group and thus awakening it more and more.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/18/13, The Book of Zohar — Introduction

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You Shall Not Bow To Your Ego’s Opinion

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Exodus,” 23:1: “You shall not accept a false report; do not place your hand with a wicked person to be a false witness.”

This law of the Torah, which is about a person’s struggle with his internal evil, is echoed in the spirit of the book of Psalms.

“You shall not accept a false report; do not place your hand with a wicked person” means that you should not support the ego that lives inside you and is your nature. Thus I distinguish between my real self and my evil, egoistic self.

My real self is based on their oppositeness, on the feeling of the Creator, which I begin to identify with the Creator, while my egoistic self constantly grows. The difference between them grows accordingly: I can determine my negative attributes towards the spiritual object (the Creator) more clearly, and thus my request becomes stronger and more refined.

“To be a false witness” means not to bow to my ego’s opinion, since when it grows it presents such logical arguments to a person that it is simply impossible to refute them by our simple mind.

In such a case the connection between people becomes very meaningful, the connection between a person and the right environment, since otherwise he draws away from the spiritual work.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/24/13

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The Temptations Of The Left Line

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhen a person is not tightly connected to the right environment he begins to draw away from the spiritual work, since the left line is so tempting!

These are not only physical temptations that temporarily distract you, that you can work out and return to the spiritual work, but also are temptations such as control, wealth, respect, praise, and knowledge.

You can probably imagine that if people who study the wisdom of Kabbalah were allowed to receive great wealth, it is doubtful that anyone could resist this temptation. If they were given palaces, yachts, and an army of servants, it would precede any other desire they may have. This is how a person is simply brainwashed. He turns into an animal in a golden cage.

He may also be given unlimited control. Suppose someone tells you: “We need you to be the president of the world. We want one person to manage everything. Anything that you desire will immediately be carried out in the world, through the whole human hierarchy.” At the same time it isn’t about the correction of the world and of people, but about ordinary technological evolution.

What can stop a person? Nothing.

You may also be tested not by wealth or domination but by fame: You are told that you are awarded the Noble Peace prize or that you are invited to speak before a prestigious forum. You are surrounded by flatterers who praise you and compliment you. Everyone looks up to you and is impressed by you! The Creator can present this kind of a show before you.

And the most important is knowing that society sees you as the wisest, smartest, most talented person of all. Knowledge is not wealth, nor power and glory. Ordinary human knowledge is to cover the whole universe; everyone looks at you as the only one who understands the secrets of the universe. Here the worship is much more significant since it is actually between the ego and the next level.

It is very hard to avoid temptations such as domination, wealth, fame, and knowledge along our spiritual path; in fact, it is impossible. We have to guard and protect students who are attracted to this. Therefore, in all the religions and in many societies, the son is usually next to his father so that he can pass down to him his life’s occupation. The son will never object and will always support and keep his father’s line since he wants to preserve his name and the character.

Educating students so they will be as loyal to you as your sons is very complex. In order to do that, one must tyrannize them, so that they will not break away from you, so that they will receive as many blows as possible during the years they are with you, and begin to realize why they get closer or draw away: for respect, for knowledge, or for wealth? So they will at least begin to feel these things.

I feel that students divert from the right path according to their internal distance from me, and according to the contempt they feel towards themselves. In that case I have to show them that it isn’t they who draw away from me but that it is I who draw away from them. If a student develops this correctly, he will understand that it isn’t actually drawing away but getting closer to me and then he will overcome everything. If he doesn’t, then nothing will happen.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 6/24/13

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 08.25.13

Question and Answers with Dr. Laitman

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 08.24.13

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Spiritual Vaccination

Dr. Michael LaitmanOur spiritual work according to the method that we receive from studying Kabbalah is similar to a medical vaccination against a disease, when a healthy body is “given” a little bit of disease: The body produces antibodies and can resist the disease.

Similarly, our desire is vaccinated against egoism: We reveal its evil in advance before its full manifestation. This is done through the group work, by drawing the upper correcting Light in which we gradually discover our egoistic properties as evil. And a person does not go by the path of suffering from egoism to health, the property of bestowal and love of other; but restricting his egoism in advance, working against it in the group and studying, under the influence of OM, he goes towards the goal, similarity with the Creator, i.e., the revelation of the Creator within himself, by a short path of correction Achishena, experiencing the disease in its small manifestation within himself, voluntarily.

Humanity needs to recognize its natural egoism as a disease. Nature shows its defect on us ourselves. Long suffering is required to identify the disease and how to cure it.

Kabbalah offers a short and kind path to correction instead of this long and unkind path. But even in advance, still at the early stage of its development, we need to recognize it as evil, which we need to get rid of, to realize the need to be vaccinated, i.e., to go through it in a small dose and never get sick again, to become healthy, build a new life.

The essence of dissemination is to gradually explain to people what the cause of their troubles is, our egoistic nature, and how to heal it by means of the method of a simple “vaccination.”
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