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Collective Wisdom

Dr. Michael LaitmanAs a result of people connecting during a workshop or roundtable, the collective mind is created. We are aware of this phenomenon known as the “wisdom of the crowd.” If people unite, then an additional force emerges and something new that exceeds their capabilities is born between them. Each possesses mediocre intelligence and capabilities and makes mistakes answering questions. However, when they are discussing it all together, listening to others’ opinions and complementing each other, the average response will be correct or very close to the correct one.

Each member makes a mistake in a different direction and, thus, on average, the answer is correct. However, it’s not only the statistical law of large numbers but also about the emotional aspect. When people unite and want to solve a problem together, they get a special sense. It is not just the average response. Since they have tried to find a solution together, a special addition emerges.

We do not simply ask for an answer from everyone individually as if in a statistical survey, but we bring them together and want to achieve one common result. Then they do not make mistakes. This is the consequence of connection, not just an answer resulting from averaging when one mistake compensates another.

When people connect, a special additional force emerges that propels us to the next level. All of us are on the bottom step; ten on the lower degree are equal to one on the higher degree, in the same way as the entire still level is equal to one plant, and all the plants to one animal, and all the animals to one human being by his power and essence.

It is not a simple equation. The force of the Creator must be added to it because it is required to switch us from the still level, where all the still elements are joined together to the vegetative level to become one plant. However, we should know that this force is always at our disposal. The Upper Light always shines. Once we connect, the Upper Light will instantly and automatically begin to work on us and raise us to the next degree.

Therefore, it is said that the entire still level is equivalent to one plant. The Upper Light is automatically included in this formula. We seemingly know a priori that the Upper Light will act and raise them.

The common answer is obtained not as the average of all the responses. By conducting a workshop and forming a circle, we must come to a common decision, a definition that will be at the center of the circle. We do not need ten separate opinions. That will produce nothing. It will just complicate things as mere philosophizing: One said this and another said that. This is analysis. However, we need synthesis, the general factor belonging to the upper degree!

We do not yet know how to use workshops properly. The workshop is a spiritual vessel, a tool for attaining the end of correction. As a result, we must rise to the level of the gathering of Rabbi Shimon’s group. We just call it by such a mundane word “workshop,” but it implies a real spiritual connection. Workshops should be changed. We will work on this. It cannot just be taught. This skill comes gradually, and the pressure from outside helps in this.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Democracy, The Rule Of The Spiritual Nation

Dr. Michael LaitmanWhat is a democracy? The entire nation, comprised of millions of people, gets together, and the people are asked, “What do you want?” Some say that they want football, others say that they want Coca Cola, and they are told, “You will get what you want.” What else can the masses want if they are not educated, if they are not raised up the spiritual ladder? In such a case, democracy leads to regression, degradation. So, what’s so good about it?

Democracy is good only when we make a circle, which means only in a group. This is where the entire world goes wrong. The actual idea of democracy is ideal, but it must be fulfilled only under certain conditions. It is impossible to implement it with the masses, among people who don’t think about tomorrow. So, people don’t go to vote because they don’t care who is elected. They only shout and resent the fact that the government doesn’t do what they want.

Neither those in government at all levels nor the governed people understand what democracy is. This s because it is not in their vessels.; it is in round vessels, which are not suitable for them at all. The people need a king, an authoritarian power. A king feels that, “The state is me; it is all mine!” And he cares about his subjects, that his citizens feel good since they belong to him. He works for the welfare of everyone in the nation, as it is all his.

So, if a nation exists egoistically, it needs a king. However, if a state already advances spiritually, it needs a democracy. They are opposites: “circles” (Igulim) and “straight line” (Yosher), the two forms of the vessel. We shouldn’t confuse one with the other since neither is better or worse. We see that democracy doesn’t work, and that it is just nice words. Free elections and freedom of speech in the media are all just toys. In fact, the leaders of society do what they must do.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/13, Writings of Rabash

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Opening The Way To The Light

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe connect in order to be guarantors for each other, but tell me: How much money do you have in your bank account that will make you want to be my guarantor? Do you know what debts I have, what problems? No one knows what can happen to me tomorrow, and you will need to cover it. How many millions do you have in order to give me all that I am lacking?

You are a guarantor only in that you build such a relationship toward me where you are concerned that nothing will be lacking for me, that you open yourself up to me, but not physically.

Physically, not one of us is able to do anything. Even with all the US banks backing you, an army armed to the teeth, and a horde of attorneys at your disposal, you still would not be able to be my guarantor in anything. So, how can we commit to be guarantors for each other?

This is not the guarantee of anything except your opening the way for the Light. You neutralize my ego, and the Light enters and changes my attitude toward life. I am transformed into a new person. You don’t need to show me that you have any knowledge or any ability, any corporeal covering for my problems or shortcomings. You only need to open the door to the Light, and I suddenly stop worrying about myself.

What is needed from you is only trying to relate to me from above your ego, and all the rest the Light will do. The Creator will finish this work for me, but you need to begin it. If you are carrying a heavy bag on your back and the bag is about to fall from your shoulders, then you will get help to carry it. However, if the bag is not heavy and not falling and you just cry that it is difficult for you, then don’t expect help.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/1/13, Shamati #38 “The Fear of God Is His Treasure”

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Don’t Be Afraid To Receive Pleasure

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In the example with “the Host and the guest,” the Host offers the guest delicious treats and the guest refuses to take them. He makes a restriction on his desire to receive. Later, after the guest experiences the delight, he becomes dependent on it. How can we avoid being dependent on pleasures?

Answer: It’s about getting pleasure in the world of Nekudim, in the world where there was a shattering of the state.

Let’s say you gave me something very tasty and sweet. I know what it is, so I make a restriction on this treat and build an intention on it. It’s as if I “paid you back.” I refused your treat many times and explain to you that I don’t feel comfortable accepting your dishes, that I am not hungry. You begin persuading me even more strongly saying that you baked this cake particularly for me and if I don’t try it, you’ll be upset.

Now you are the one who is asking me to do you a favor. When it comes to doing you a favor instead of receiving pleasure for my own sake, I “give up” and eat a piece of cake. I really think that I do it for you. I demonstrate to you how pleased I am so that you have no doubts that while I am enjoying your cake, I am doing so to please you.

All of a sudden I feel a delight that is a thousand times bigger than I ever expected from this piece of cake, something incredible, beyond my Kelim, vessels, beyond my abilities. I don’t see you behind it any longer. All I feel is overwhelming pleasure.

At this point, it’s not about a simple relationship at the level of “giving and taking” (level 1); rather, it is the relationship between the Creator and a person on the level of intention (level 2).

Don’t Be Afraid to Receive Pleasure

When I become equal to the Creator in my intentions (equal) and start giving to Him, I begin sensing Him and rise to His level. This state is above all the pleasure or suffering. It’s beyond anything! It is a sensation of the thought of creation before it was created.

It turns out that there is such a great inherent pleasure in this experience that I did not expect and which I simply cannot resist. Now, I will have to pay you somehow for this piece of cake.

This is called my shattering. All my intentions to bestow to you instead of pleasing myself, all my plans to avoid being a guest disappear. I just become a slave to the delight that fills me.

From that point on, a new type of pleasure that we receive from sensing the Creator builds the system of worlds: Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, Assiya.

As a result, when we start self-correction within this system of worlds, we become equal to the Creator because our correction includes the delight that comes not from the Light per se, but from our sense of equality with Him on the level of “Adam – Man.”

The fact is that the level at which we used to exist and build our relationships with others with these calculations (“you give me and I’ll give you”), like a polite guest with a host, is simply animate pleasures at the animate level. Rejecting something because we don’t feel that it is right to take it or because we are embarrassed to accept it, as well as the host’s polite insistence, are ordinary human relationships. They are associated with our current level and there is nothing “lofty” about them. There is no bestowal in them whatsoever.

You simply want to please me because you care about me. I want to return my pleasure back to you because I don’t want to feel that I am the receiving party. I have my pride and shame and I cannot afford to accept your treats. I have to reject them.

A host who knows and understands human psychology acts in a way that will not only persuade me to accept his treats but to feel happy that in doing so I do him a favor. But all this is in the framework of regular human interactions. At the second level, we create a new relationship, not between two people but between me and the Creator, when I have to equate yourself with pleasure that I get from Him .

As soon as I merge with the Creator, I receive pleasures that don’t exist in this world, nor are they present in the Light that created us, since these pleasures derive from the level of the Creator and from our understanding that we are similar to Him. So here the shattering occurs, the structure of a new system. Only by ascending from bottom to top can we create desires and intentions that make us really similar to Him. And then, all our embarrassments and shame turn into glory and delight.

Question: Can we become dependent on pleasures at this level?

Answer: It’s impossible. The system is built in a way that while ascending we cannot be destroyed. It is made so that while we are not ready to receive pleasures correctly, it won’t reveal itself to us.

Pleasure comes from a sensation of understanding and realization, from the feeling of eternity and perfection, from everything that you disclose, everything that you already exist in.

You have to be ready for it. The entire ladder from bottom to top is built in accordance with three lines that lead us. That’s why the entire system is made so that it prepares us to attain this state.
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From the Stockholm Convention “Joy In Unity” Day One 8/30/13, Lesson 2

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Hunger Is Knocking At The Door

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from svpressa.ru): “Most of the world’s hungry live in developing countries. According to the latest Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) statistics from 2013, there are 842 million hungry people in the world and 98 percent of them are in developing countries. They are distributed like this: 553 million in Asia and the Pacific, 223 million in Sub-Saharan Africa, 47 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, 4 million in the Near East and North Africa, 16 million in developed countries.“ Source: World Food Programme

“In Africa, the problem of hunger is due to the dependence on food imports that give considerable profit to companies in developed countries. Dependence arose because of Western policies: the United States collects billions of dollars in donations. But under U.S. law, humanitarian aid should be made in the USA; thus the state provides work for its farmers. In Africa, humanitarian aid is not distributed but appears on the market at a very low price, with which local farmers cannot compete. As a result, they cease to grow crops.

“For example, Bulgaria no longer grows peppers; they are imported from France at dumping prices. Lithuania ceased to produce dairy products, Portugal – to fish. They can barely make ends meet. Russian shops are filled with imported products, but the fields are overgrown with forest.”

My Comment: If the world had been connected with good ties, such integration would have been beneficial for everyone. But the development according to the plan to bring us to similarity with the Creator leads strong countries to crisis, even greater, than those countries that they put pressure on. Because of egoistic development, and especially global international egoistic development, all the countries, without exception, will suffer in a form that will force each country to realize the need to change itself to the opposite.
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Bearer Of A Good Method

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we explain to social services organizations that we work with that in order to internalize the integral method, nothing will work for them without us? Is it possible, for example, to tell them that we have some special characteristics or knowledge?

Answer: You don’t have any unique characteristics. You simply have created and are in a collective through which you are powered by its integral sum of knowledge, strength and emotion. There are numerous psychological articles on this subject; it is not mysticism or religion. So, you possess these characteristics. Without the collective, you are nothing on your own. If they don’t have a collective like this, then they too are nothing.

It doesn’t matter how you talk with them or on what you base your words. Everything depends only on this: How they will get inner warmth from you. If this will begins to sprout in them, if they can listen to each other, talk with each other, and cry with each other within their circle, then you can work quietly with them, and then they will understand that you are the bearer of a very good method.
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From Kab TV’s “Through Time” 9/17/13

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When Your Eyes Open Up To See

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How can we establish cooperation between the different groups of our global society correctly so that it will be most efficient?

Answer: We don’t need to think about that since the Light will do everything. We simply must work on the connection, on everyone’s incorporation and adhesion. Later, we will discover that we already exist in the system.

When we yearn inward, into the common center, we suddenly discover that we are properly connected to one another like parts of a puzzle that fit one another. There are holes and bulges in each of us, and we suddenly fit one another like cogwheels. However, this multi-layer, multi-directional form isn’t just three dimensional, like in our world, but multi-dimensional. All the bulges and holes match one another. The Light does that and not us.

The cogs of all the wheels connect more tightly until they create one whole, until they all accumulate and fill all of Malchut of Ein Sof (Infinity).

This actually exists already, but the state of the shattering is gradually revealed to us, meaning the lack of contact, until everyone is incorporated gradually in the general system.

All of this is gradually revealed to us as our eyes gradually open up to see. In the past when a prisoner who had been in the dungeon for decades was taken out, they used to put several sacks over his head and remove them gradually so that he would get used to the light of day and wouldn’t be blinded by the strong light. Thus, the concealing Masachim (screens) gradually are removed from us, and we change them to Masachim of receiving.

When we receive the Light in the attribute of bestowal, it doesn’t blind us because it doesn’t enter the desire itself, but is above it. So, we have nothing to worry about, but to yearn for unity. Everything else between us will work out by itself. All the groups will begin to complement one another and we will see how inter-group reorganization and the division of labor.

The whole world will come to an international division of labor, not as it is today where China produces the merchandise, America prints money, Russia pumps oil, and so on. Instead, we will see the correct mutual cooperation between all on every level to optimally complement one another. First of all, this will happen between the groups.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/21/13, Shamati #59 “About the Rod and the Serpent”

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We Want The Light!

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe exist in this world in a unique state created by the expansion of the Light from above downward. The Light created all vessels, desires, and we are the only part of this entire reality that has the freewill to change this condition and all of the nature, the whole creation.

All of nature is given to us so that we may use it and lift ourselves to the exalted status of the Creator. Therefore, we shouldn’t expect something more from above, and if we are late in realizing the steps where we should have already changed, then we experience them as suffering.

Pressure from nature is constantly growing because included in it is a special engine of development; various Lights are constantly descending from above, manifesting with greater force, and awakening larger spiritual genes (Reshimot) in us. After all, correction starts with the easiest and progresses to the more difficult.

But if we are late and don’t correct the Reshimot that awaken in us today, then by tomorrow we have accumulated a debt with the delay, and increasing the difference to two Reshimot, today’s and tomorrow’s. And the next day, it will be tripled, and because of these multiplying Reshimot, we experience pain—the difference between me and the Light.

Instead of bridging this gap, equalizing with the Light, connecting with it, and becoming one integrated system in order to understand, feel, be filled with it, and participate all its actions, we act against it and keep increasing our oppositeness to it.

This oppositeness is the very thing that we feel as pain because our will to receive wants the Light! Even though we don’t even realize what we want, we are standing opposite something we need, but we are not getting it. And this is experienced as all kinds of suffering.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/18/10, “The Teaching of Kabbalah and its Essence”

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