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A Small Spider In A Large Web Of Connections

laitman_929Rabash, the article, “Purpose of Society (1984, 1.2)”: Since man is created with a Kli called “self-love,” where one does not see that an act will yield self-benefit, one has no motivation to make even a tiny movement. And without annulling self-love, it is impossible to achieve Dvekut (adhesion) with the Creator, meaning equivalence of form.

So they give us a society, for if its influence on me is stronger than the personal demands of my ego, I am ready to change under the influence of my environment. Suppose I want to rest, to travel, to have a good time; yet on the other hand I am in a society that pressures me and compels me to be involved with something else. Under its pressure I will certainly carry out what it requires from me, but unwillingly.

Can the society influence me so that I will want to carry out its requirements, and further that this will be from my own pressure and with great internal readiness? Suppose that it shows me that if I work according to its instructions, it will respect and elevate me, show respect and the like.

In this case I begin to leave my desire for fun, for rest, for sleep, and I run to work just to earn the right attitude of the society towards me. This means that the society can play with a person.

In human nature is inherently such a condition that society can bring a person to suicide or can elevate him to the pinnacle of glory. Everything depends upon the environment. A person has no weight himself. The attitude of the environment towards him is his sole and only determinant.

So we can take advantage of the possibility that an individual can be influenced by society and we can gather a group that will influence us so that we will carry out every action for the benefit of others. And with its help, we can bring ourselves to a state in which an external force, the Light that Reforms, will also influence us. Yet it works only through the environment. Since the right society can awaken us to the right actions, it is possible to awaken Ohr Makif (Surrounding Light) on ourselves through that society.

I adhere naturally to a society with the right desires for bestowal, love of others, etc. My ego says: “Do you want them to respect you? You must yearn for this.” I begin to yearn, and simultaneously through this I also attract some kind of natural force found in the society called Ohr Makif. Under its influence I begin to be changed. So everything depends upon how I situate myself regarding my environment.

If my environment is capable of awakening me correctly and acts subtly regarding my ego, it can really play with me. I am ready for this, I want it! This is because my ego is my enemy and I want to do something about it.

The society starts to play with my ego and awakens great desires for altruistic actions in me. And simultaneously it lowers the Ohr Makif onto me through them. That is how my mutual connection with the right group solves all of the problems of my correction through “equivalence of form” with the higher power.

So that the right attitudes will be created between me and society, it is necessary to stand under defined conditions that have been determined by the Kabbalists, like maintaining attitudes of equality between friends, integration with one another, greater preference for the desires of a friend over my personal desires, etc.

If I act according to these conditions, I gradually enter into its system of connection and am found in it like a small node within its network, and all the rest of the right nodes around me are my society. That is how we help each other and complement everyone’s problems, learning to cooperate correctly with the general system until we begin to feel like a whole group.

The group suddenly begins to feel that it is found in a general system of connection that is acting on it. The discovery of the power of the general system is the discovery of the Creator within us, within the group. A person is not capable of feeling this alone. He lacks the appropriate senses for this.

When I find myself like a small spider in a large web, then through connection with others, I feel the space that surrounds me, I feel the Creator. This is only on condition that I have the right connection with the friends.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/2014, Writings of Rabash

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Games Of The Creator

Laitman_514_04Question: There can be these states where we are so integrated into the group, come to lessons, and keep the connection with the friends, as if everything was within us and there was no external force, no Creator. The question arises, whether this force exists on the outside or do we build it on our own?

Answer: The Creator plays with us. He gives you, like small children, the opportunity to be shown to what extent you are, as if, independent, understanding, clever, and brave.

You need to stop yourselves in time. There can’t be any forward advancement, only if He pulls you, carries you on His wings, pulls you forward, or pushes you from behind.

We have no motor! The motor isn’t within us, and the fuel is from Him. We don’t have any! It is done on purpose to later show us how far we have come.

We need to balance everything and not complain that we have nothing. We are nobody and have nothing, i.e., we are like a rag underfoot or a pile of broken mechanisms. No. It needs to be in the middle, somewhere in between the two.

At each moment of our existence we need to feel the necessity for the upper force: the need to recognize good and evil, the need to differentiate between them, the need for the correct choice for the direction of forward movement.

As Baal HaSulam explained, one needs to go forward correctly exactly in the middle line. This means that without any connection to the next level, to the upper line, to a higher category, you are not able to do anything.
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From the Convention In St. Petersburg “Day One” 9/19/14, Lesson 2

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The Essential Secret Of The Jews, Part 68

From the book: The Essential Secret of the Jews, M. Brushtein

Six Steps

We cannot even imagine how we, the people of the planet Earth, are close to each other.

Do you know how many people are between, for example, a technologist from India and archivist of Estonia? It turns out only six.

In 2002, the American sociologist Duncan Watts and his colleagues conducted an impressive experiment.

A task was given to more than 98,000 volunteers. Through their acquaintances, scattered around the world, they had to send an email message to an unknown addressee, arbitrarily chosen for this purpose.

The list of recipients contained a university professor, an archivist from Estonia, an engineer from India, an Australian policeman, a Norwegian army vet, and others. There were eighteen people altogether.

The experiment showed that, on average, it was necessary to forward the message six times so that it reached its destination.

“This progression of human beings out of such an ostensibly anarchical condition into ever larger and ever more ordered aggregations – of bands, villages, cities, and states – can in fact be understood as a gradual rise in the size and complexity of social networks. And today this process is continuing to unfold as we become hyperconnected.” (Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, Connected)

We are connected through one network. We influence each other directly or indirectly. For example, coffee harvested in Brazil, just like vodka, produced in Russia, people drink everywhere, with all the ensuing positive and negative consequences. It can be said this a direct link between the countries.

Indirect relations include all that relates to the waste associated with the production of the same coffee and vodka, as well as the production of energy needed for this. All this has been known for a long time.

“Humanity, as a living substance, is inextricably linked with the material-energetic processes of the specific geological envelope of the Earth – its biosphere. It cannot be physically independent from it for a minute.” (Vladimir I. Vernadsky, “Some Words About the Noösphere”)

Tendencies for unity and interdependence are increasing every year. Whether we like it or not. Whether we are aware of this or not. The term “globalization” has long since become an everyday word in all the languages. Ambassador Wu Jianmin, President, China Foreign Affairs University, says the following about this:

“The world of the 21st century is different from that in which we lived before. We have moved from mutual assured destruction to economic interdependence.”

Whether you like it or not, globalization is gaining momentum and makes our world deeply interdependent. A conspicuous example is the relationship between China and the United States …

In 1972, the trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $5 million USD, and in 2012 it reached $500 billion USD

In 1972, US investments in the Chinese economy were zero, and now they are up $60 billion USD.” (Global Affairs).

Interconnections are a good thing. It is difficult to argue. However, a direct consequence of such deep relationships is interdependence. And it is fraught with consequences, and not always pleasant. It is because of this relationship and this interdependence that the financial crisis broke out in 2008.

What can we do, how can we connect what seemingly cannot be connected? We need some special methodology to solve this apparently unsolvable problem. But this methodology has been around for a long time. With its help, Abraham connected completely different people into a single nation with a unique destiny.

“The conflict between good and evil which proceeds unceasingly in the breast of man nowhere reaches such an intensity as in the Jewish race. The dual nature of mankind is nowhere more strongly or more terribly exemplified.” (Winston S. Churchill, “A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People”)
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Problems That Stem From An Excess Of Intelligence

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe difference between a person and a cat is that a cat doesn’t make mistakes because it is connected to nature, with the force that moves it called nature or the Creator. This is the power of the overall system that manages the cat and shows it how to behave at each and every moment.

So a cat never makes a mistake. It doesn’t even think about what it is doing; it only acts and that’s it. It is constantly managed by the system, and so every one of its jumps are precisely calculated. A cat acts like a perfect machine.

A person, unlike a cat, is not a perfect machine. On the contrary, he doesn’t know how to act and constantly makes mistakes. Even though he has received additional senses and intelligence in comparison to other animals, he is not managed by nature.

This is called his freedom of choice, which determines how he uses his human emotion and intelligence. And if he doesn’t take the entire general system into account, he always activates his intelligence incorrectly and harms himself. After all, his ego causes him to err.

If we intentionally don’t learn how to use our intelligence correctly, we always harm ourselves. The proof for this is in the entire history of the human race that has gone on for thousands of years, yet development isn’t good and beautiful anywhere. It is accompanied by wars and problems, searches and disappointments, and failure is followed by failure. We try to do things for the best, but things only become worse.

The time has come to say, “Enough!, We are tired of all of these failures, the hatred, the problems in the family.” One by one, families fall apart, since in our development, we have reached the recognition of evil.

This is no longer just the miserable life that we lived before when nature pushed us to development through blows. In our time we have reached a level of intelligence and feelings by which we can see we have been developing by suffering that is only increasing. We are talking about a third world war. So, are we unable to stop it?

Modern man no longer wants anything from life except drugs or antidepressants. He doesn’t want to start a family and bring children into the world. He doesn’t want to take any responsibility. In this situation, we come to the month of Elul, to repentance. But this means that the solution to this bad situation is already illuminating us and redemption is near. We are ready to stop this flawed development, this negative trend. We have had enough suffering!

This is the sum total of the month of Elul, our decision to develop in a new form from now on. It means that we decide to reach balance with nature, to approach the higher power through establishing new rules of behavior based upon, “and you shall love your friend as yourself.” In this way, we reach balance with nature and become like the higher power.

Human society must reach full mutual support so that by itself, it will control that additional intelligence and feeling that has raised us above the level of the animal, prevented us from balance with nature and took us outside of the realm of its control. This means that we must arrange our reason and feeling through connection, unity, and love between us.

In this way we complete ourselves on the level of Adam (man) and make the entire system homogeneous, integral, connected, united, and completely mutually dependent, like everything else in nature. This is called love.

We don’t understand what love is. Love is to be in partnership, in the right connection with all the rest of the parts of nature. You feel them and do what they need and they feel you and do what you need, like a healthy body in which all of the organs are in a mutual connection such as this.

The understanding that we must reach such a connection is called the month of Elul, repentance.

Question: So what is it necessary to think in a time like the month of Elul, in order to change life into a better life?

Answer: In our world, only the good connection between people is missing. There is full abundance, but everyone suffers because of their intolerable character. We must correct this, and we have the opportunity to do so.

If we direct ourselves towards correction, it would be a wonderful result of the self-criticism that we do in the month of Elul. So we truly advance according to its name: Elul, meaning,  “Ani LeDodi VeDodi Li” – “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine,”(“Song of Songs” 6:3).
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From KabTV’s“ A New Life” 9/14/14

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A Theatrical Marvel

laitman_285_04Question: Theater is a well-known phenomenon from antiquity. Performances on stage began in ancient Greece, but in the more primitive tribes it was customary to gather around a fire, dress in animal skins, and depict the mammoth hunt.

With the passage of time, theater went through a multitude of changes, but the unusual sensation of wonder that came to life on the stage that was connected to it was preserved. A person who comes to the theater feels himself so much a part of this marvel that already when he buys tickets, he begins to look forward to it, to sense and experience it like a child.

He comes to the theater, sits in his seat, and feels the crowd filling the hall. The light gradually dims, and in the hall a pleasant tension grows in expectation of the raising of the curtain and the appearance of the actors on the stage.

Thus a unique feeling appears as if, at this moment, you are detached from all of the daily problems and concerns, and are immersed in another life. What is this particular wonderful experience that occurs in people in the theater?

Answer: There is such a thing as the influence of the environment on a person. To a particular degree, it is also typical of animals, and, whereas a person feels the influence of the environment very much, it could consist of only one person or it could consist of thousands of people.

Everything depends only upon how strongly the person perceives the influence of the environment. If a person important to him, then one person is enough. This means that the quality is important here. However, if there are millions of people, then they are influential through their quantity. In any case, a person enters under the influence of the environment.

We are not very susceptible to the influence of children, but adults are able to affect us, and the higher they are in our eyes, the more influential. Fear, ambition, envy and a craving for dominance also are mixed in here.

As we come to a theater, we are already prepared to enter the influence of the artificial environment that will present some unique event to us. It could be that it is not completely realistic, but it somehow is connected to the life of man.

This often is presented ecstatically as very strong love, hatred, fear, and despair, or some kind of bright, historical event. All of this is inflated intentionally by external means of influence and brought to the viewer.

Music is even added that greatly enhances the experience. For anyone who knows opera, it is the most powerful, influential tool.

A person loves to enter under the influence of the presentation because it connects with his life. Even though he hasn’t experienced events of this type himself, he still can imagine them for himself.

We love theater because it is ready to remind us about experiences that we have gone through, and they can even be tragic events, but the deeper you go into the past, the more they are mollified, so we like to look at them. We identify with the experiences of the actors and even cry with them with emotion.

We even are ready to pay money for this! This is very strange. We experience fear, excitement, and even cry and all of this we pay for. However, the idea is that the person perceives these concerns and experiences when they are mollified. He understands that these are not realistic concerns from his life, but only impressions from the show, and so he likes them.

The theater makes it possible to experience sensations like these again and again that today seem pleasant and sweet. This indicates that everything that we went through in life, even the most tragic events, are ultimately sweetened. They are mollified such that that we agree that we had to go through all of these situations, for this was our life, and, in life, there is a place for everything.

This suggests that nothing in life is accidental; every event that happens is a part of the fate that is given to us intentionally from above, and we must go through it. Ultimately, we agree that everything that we experienced in our lives was justly and necessarily sent to us. So, we justify every step of our way because we understand its benefit.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 9/30/14

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Short Stories: From Adam To Noah

Dr. Michael LaitmanAdam was the first to attain the system of creation and he discovered that the ultimate goal of human evolution is the attainment of the upper state, the ascent to the level of the Creator, which all the future generations should reach.

Thus, he immediately began to disseminate the wisdom of Kabbalah by establishing three groups of students called his sons.

They were not corporeal sons, but spiritual ones who were on a lower level than their teacher and who learned from him how to ascend to the next level. Therefore, the terms, “father” and “son,” in the Torah refer to two levels. There are no blood relations between them, but only a spiritual continuation.

After Adam, there were three lines that stemmed from his students: Shem, Ham and Japheth. The line that stemmed from Shem developed, and the two other lines turned out to be dead ends. But they too were necessary in order to express, highlight, and stabilize the middle line.

Thus, a glorious chain of Kabbalists and their schools developed for many years from Adam until the time of ancient Babylon: ten generations of Kabbalists until Noah and ten generations following him.

Every generation symbolizes its certain phase in the revelation of an increasingly stronger connection with the Creator and the recognition of the network of forces that manage our world.

In Noah’s times, the clarification and the purification of the system of knowing the Creator and getting closer to Him continued, and it is described in the story of Noah’s Ark.

After all of Noah’s students ascended to the level of unity in the attribute of bestowal and equivalence to the Creator by managing to connect the parts of the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking nature inside them in one capsule (the ark), they managed to overcome the level called the “flood.” Instead of drowning, they absorbed all the attributes of the water, the attributes of life, the attribute of bestowal.

The shattering that occurred in them was the beginning of a new world. Noah symbolizes this turning point when people who study Kabbalah acquire the attribute of bestowal, which is metaphorically presented by the water. Having experienced an internal revolution, they begin to use this point correctly and continue its development.
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From KabTV’s “Short Stories” 10/15/14

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A War Over The Taste Of Life

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Millions of people read and study the Torah, but what are they looking for if the Creator can only be found in the connection between people?

Answer: Their study is not in vain. Any study of the Torah helps a person advance and enables him to clarify things. Millions of people both religious and nonreligious have studied the Torah in many ways: the Bible, the New Testament, Islam and Christianity. Any form of studying that is somehow connected to the Torah, whether directly or indirectly, helps people advance and prepares humanity for the right connection, for correction, for the revelation of the Creator to all the created beings.

Everything that happens leads to certain outcomes. All the religious struggles and wars in the past and those that are going on today were meant to clarify the right spiritual vessel. It isn’t clear why our desire to receive has to suffer, but it is a fact that the afflictions a person undergoes develop him.

How many people die each day and what terrible diseases are revealed! New viruses will appear in the world to which modern medicine will have no answers and it is all in order to clarify the right desire.

After all, it is impossible to advance towards revealing the right desire unless you are totally disappointed of the previous desires. You are disappointed not because you cannot fulfill these desires but because you want something more meaningful.

If I suffer now, the pain doesn’t enable me to sin because I have no desire, no power, no time left, or the opportunity to do so. The afflictions force me to feel disappointed of the state I am in and to start clarifying the taste of life and of my existence.

I cannot reach the question of “what is the point of my life?” without sufferings. All the extremist streams that existed in Christianity in the past and which are rising in Islam now are meant only for this purpose: to clarify the taste of life. By demanding that the whole world accept their religion and putting their flag in every continent they are fighting for the purpose of human existence.

It is all the subconscious clarification of the thought of creation. At the moment they are clarifying it this way, but we who study Kabbalah must allow them to advance by the Light that Reforms.

This Light is revealed in our desires. If we draw the Light and begin to reveal it sufficiently, it will begin to flow from us to the rest of humanity since all the souls are connected, like connected vessels. Then they will begin to clarify these questions on a totally different level.

Then the extremist Muslims will not have to fight the corporeal bodies and will try to understand more deeply the meaning of life. In the meantime they are looking for the answer to this question by killing one another, but we can raise them to another level of clarification, to the next level.

Then they will understand that the issue isn’t bodies but desires. This clarification will be by the connection to the source of life, to a state that the Light comes from, that we all have to attain. We have to illuminate this way for them and show them that it exists, that it is open for everyone, and that the clarification is actually by the connection between different people, actually between those who are most distant and different.

Thanks to their connection above all the differences and covering all the sins by love, they will discover the upper force, which means that they will attain a deeper meaning of life.

It all depends on us. We only have to teach humanity how to connect in order to discover the Creator in the connection among us. This is the goal we are fulfilling when we organize conversation circles for the public all over the country. Thus we will be able to express the power of unity rather easily since the Israeli nation has been in this state in the past. Later this force will spread from us to the other nations.

Then we will suddenly discover that the moment we manage to connect the nation to the wisdom of truth, which means to connect thanks to the Light that Reforms, the world will suddenly calm down: the wars in Iraq, the Ukraine, and in other places will stop and so will phenomena like the Ebola virus, etc.

Our whole life will work out since we will bring people to a state in which the Upper Light will begin to clarify their desires and they will not need to clarify them by killing each other. Those who can draw the Light are only those who study the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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From the 2nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/14, Writing of Rabash

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 10.26.14

Writings of Rabash “Shlavei HaSulam,” “Make for Yourself a Rav and Buy Yourself a Friend-1”

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The Book of Zohar — Selected Excerpts “Introduction,” “The Seventh Commandment,” Item 223 

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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Vol. 6, Part 16, Item 49

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Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Peace,” “The Wheel of Transformation of the Form”  

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