Creating The General Vessel With Proper Connections

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus”, 18; 22: Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination.

Such relations in our world are the expression of homosexuality. In the spiritual world it is the inability of the male and the female parts of the general vessel to properly connect.

The male part is the one who bestows and the female part is the one who receives. They have to connect according to certain laws. Certain actions have to be performed in their connection such as purification, exposure, etc. Only then can a general vessel can be created in the right combination between the attributes of receiving and of bestowal. What is more, this all takes place within a person.

A new level cannot be born out of two male parts since the Light of Hasadim, the Light of bestowal, is lacking in this combination,. The Torah, however, speaks only about actions that can be used in order to bestow outside oneself, since by that you correct your soul.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/19/14

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Prayer As A Manifestation Of Human Desires

laitman_239It seems to us that a prayer is a canonized appeal to a “human-like” object. However, in this world, we understand the notion of prayer incorrectly. In fact, at any given moment, whatever we do, we always pray, meaning we express our desires. The expression of our desires is called a prayer.

Kabbalah is a system of relationships with the upper force that began at the time of Adam. It is the most ancient wisdom in the world that began 5,775 years ago; a human by the name of Adam initiated the relationships with the upper level of nature that is now called the Creator because it stands for the system that created us. This explains why the most basic and correct definitions should be borrowed from the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Adam called the manifestation of human desires a prayer because our constantly changing desires modify the system we live in. The system reacts to our prayers directly since we act within its boundaries. So, we constantly pray, thus the system continuously changes, thereby impacting us.

That’s why we have to correctly direct our desires, concentrate on the system we exist in, thus shaping joint intentions and promoting our internal advancement so that we can influence the system purposefully instead of chaotically impacting it by having diverse desires. For that, we unite in groups and encourage each other, thereby approaching certain intentions and desires, and defining a vision of our future. Our focused exertions affect the system greatly; therefore, it begins reacting to our influence very sensibly.

When we interact with each other, we start feeling a great need for the property of bestowal and love, the quality of integrality and mutual aid. When we effectively and strongly influence the system, it begins influencing us. This “feedback” can dramatically modify us even if we don’t have a desire to change deep inside us.

Because we are egoists, we have only one type of desire. That’s why we are unable to demand from the system that it change our desires and intentions. No matter what, we will always bring up our egoistic incentives. However, the system is built in a way that even if our request is not sincere, it still reacts to our demands correctly. This is because the shattering, the inversion from altruism to egoism, progressed from top to bottom. That’s why when we raise our requests from the bottom up, the system corrects them.

When we are together with the group, we unite; thus, each of us receives a desire to move correctly inside the system. When we impact the system by our willingness to change and rise above our egoistic nature, it responds to us.

Most important is to remember that we are constantly under the system’s influence. Even if we are not yet a corrected element of the system but we manage to stick together in a group and continue our efforts to self-correct, then we influence the entire system in a good way. In return, the system modifies us by its reciprocal influence. By doing so, the system corrects, revives, and rectifies itself.

This explains why everything depends on our prayer, meaning on our having good aspirations even though they are still very small, weak, and primitive. Our aspirations are being calculated within the system. It is a constant cumulative process in which all sorts of reciprocal corrections take place.

It’s essential not to cool down when working in the group. We should support each other, mutually enhance our individual desires, and take advantage of our egoistic properties such as jealousy, envy, and competition. We should use these features to reach the desirable results from others, particularly from our tens, thereby multiplying our desire to improve by dozens of times.

Every friend, becoming ten times greater, will tell the others about their new increased desires. Then, each one of our friends borrows a hundred times more from others, and so on and so forth. It means that when we are in a circle, there are no limitations in strengthening our desires to change.

Moreover, when one falls, others rise. This counterbalance keeps us on a constant move to correction. In this case, we truly can raise our huge desires to the system, urge it to change us and ask it to influence us by reciprocal reaction, the so-called Ohr Makif, the Returning Light, that gradually corrects us.

A self-tuning, self-correcting spiritual system, as any other type of a search engine, constantly explores how to better react to us, absorb us, adapt us to it so that we completely correct and turn into its useful elements. This is how it is built.

The Study of the Ten Sefirot teaches us that the system of the upper worlds consists of 125 levels: five worlds each of which includes five discrete multifunctional blocks (Partzufim), and  each block in turn consisting of five sub-levels (Sefirot). It is a very flexible system that quickly adapts to our demands. When we strive to coordinate with it through our desires and become similar to it, rise to its highest levels and enter a state of absolute homeostasis, connected with it, then the system immediately reacts to our desires and corrects us in a certain way so that we turn into its active, useful, and internal components.

Then we begin controlling the system due to the fact that previously we were its corrupt elements, whereas at this point we approach a state of correction. This is an extraordinary, miraculous property: If an uncorrected particle strives to self-correct, it influences the entire system much stronger than its already corrected elements.

Due to the fact that we are positioned between the system’s corrupt and corrected layers, we have a chance to sense, understand, analyze, and synthesize the properties and possibilities that are a full degree higher than the mechanistic system itself. Our egoistic “I” that we strive to alter helps us become a totally different entity and rise to a new level in the structure of the higher force that created the entire system. I rise above the system and become similar to the property of bestowal and love, to the authentic quality of everything there is, to the Creator.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Shamati #5

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Question: It is said in Shamati #5 that the properties of Lishma (for the sake of bestowal to others and to the Creator) are awakened from Above. If this property appears in us “on its own,” without our participation, then why do we need to apply efforts, i.e., try to awaken this property from below?

Answer: The thing is that without our participation, no changes will happen to our egoistic, receiving nature. We won’t start caring for others, nor will we orient ourselves to serve them.

This mission is impossible in this material world. Any system, even a purely mechanical one, requires some energy to perform work. It always loses a certain amount of energy.

The only exceptions to this rule are low-temperature, superconducting systems in which upon certain conditions there appears a property that doesn’t allow the system to consume energy for its own sake, but makes it give the energy away. This example sheds some light on what “acting for the sake of others” means.

We are constructed in a way that we always have to gain something. Without this feeling, we cannot do anything at all. That’s why changing our nature to its opposite, bestowal, seems unfeasible and incredible to us.

We should learn how to feel other’s desires and how to fulfill them. We have to regard ourselves as a remedy to fill others. It’s not natural for this world, nor does it exist at the inanimate, vegetative, animate, or speaking levels.

That’s why Baal HaSulam raises a question about how to acquire the property for the sake of the Creator, i.e., how can we start caring for absolute strangers with whom we have nothing in common and to whom we don’t have the slightest feelings that even remotely remind us, let’s say, of the relationship between a mother and a child. This situation implies an absolutely clear understanding that we are acting without any feasible possibility to get anything in return.

Unless we acknowledge that our nature is a hundred percent egoistic, we won’t ever understand how it is possible to go through such an inversion. A human brain is incapable of comprehending how this kind of inversion can take place in this material world.

Anything that happens to us teaches us that our work that we conduct on ourselves and things that we are trying to achieve in the group is always done solely for the sake of getting a reward. It can be a “restitution” that compensates us for only 1% of our efforts; the other 99% of our activities we do for the sake of others. Still, anything we ever do is done only because of this 1%.

For example, many steam and mechanical engines have efficiency not higher than 3-5%, but they were created specifically to perform with this level of efficiency. That’s why for us 1% has a huge significance. All we do is just for this 1%. If not for this 1%, we won’t be able to give 99% to others.

The question is: Do we really work to get 1% and for this kind of reward we involuntarily give away 99%? Let’s say, I have a boss who exploits me and pays me the minimum wage, but this wage somehow supports my existence. On the contrary, the work I do for my boss equals 99%, and I get back only 1% even though I don’t approve of this state of affairs. However, I won’t be able to exist without this 1%. If I don’t understand this “plan,” I won’t be able to work for my boss at all.

If we explore ourselves deeply enough, we’ll see that in order to achieve complete bestowal without receiving anything for our own sake, we are unable to make a single move, our body just won’t let us! Therefore, it’s possible to come to a state of absolute bestowal only under a special influence from Above.

Those who are subject to this kind of impact go through the process of internal inversion and relate to themselves in a totally different way. That’s why it is said: “Try and see how beautiful the Creator is” since the property of complete bestowal “outside ourselves” is a quality of the Creator.

If it is so, then we just have to understand why we should apply all kinds of efforts, follow numerous tips, try to reach the property of complete bestowal even if we know that no advice can ever help us to re-arrange ourselves unless the upper force descends and corrects us, thus giving us a chance to work for the sake of others.

In this case, why should we keep trying? The thing is that each one of us has a responsibility to apply maximal efforts and strive to correct  ourselves using any remedies that are available to us. Exertions that we make are called “a prayer.” In other words, a prayer is a demonstration of our intentions and desires. A prayer is a manifestation of what in fact we are aspiring to.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/8/14, Shamati #5

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 10.29.14

Shamati #1 “There’s None Else Besides Him”

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Lesson on the Topic: Preparation for the Congress 

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Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar,” Item 61 

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Audio Version Of The Blog – 10.28.14

Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
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Taking Care Of Business

Taking Care Of BusinessQuestion: When the people of Israel fell from the degree of the Temple, they moved on like sheep that keep close in the face of danger. This danger was awakened by antisemitism that followed us everywhere. Why was it so?

Answer: This began when we fell from the degree of the First Temple. Antisemitism appeared when having built the First Temple, from this highest point, the sons of Israel swept down.

But it manifested very slowly—as they descended. At first there was no obvious opposition, and still, antisemitism was already manifesting during the times of the Babylonian exile between the First and the Second Temples, at the time of Nebuchadnezzar, Queen Esther, and Haman.

At that time, I would say it manifested on the ideological level, on the level of the priests, the governmental level, but not on the level of the common people who did not yet understand this opposition, did not see it, as we see in the book of Esther.

But as we descended and grew more distant from the principle of “love thy neighbor as thyself,” antisemitism kept increasing and spread through the nations of the world.

It seems like antisemitism is irrational in its nature. The Jewish people have survived despite trials, humiliation, and destruction. The tendency to assimilate did not work: Even though many wanted to be like everyone else , still, they were not able to become like others. Also the intellectuals in the countries of Diaspora were frequently more antisemitic than the regular people.

Here we must understand that the educated people lead the antisemitic movement because they understand and perceive the difference between the ideologies, the difference in the approach to life in the depth of attainment and perception. I’d even go as far as talk about the difference in the inner philosophy of the Jewish people and the other nations.

A regular person cannot tell the difference. He can say: “So what that they are smarter, but then they are weaker. They are not like us.” After all, there are differences between all the nations, and overall, regular people do not have a special understanding in these matters. But it is possible to scare them through insinuations against the Jews, what has even happened in our time.

All of this is very irrational. Once I told an elderly woman in Siberia that I am a Jew, and she did not believe me: “Jews have horns,” she said. And the interesting thing is that I had nothing to say. She said it in such a naive and honest way that I just kept quiet. So if I do not have horns, then I am not a Jew.

But this is not what this is about. Antisemitism is a consequence of the descent of the Jewish people from the level of their highest attainment, the degree of love thy neighbor as thyself. If we had stayed up there, no one would have a problem with us language–there would be nothing but envy, good kind of envy. They would want to learn from us.

But as soon as we started falling from this level, neglecting this height, descending, antisemitism appeared right away.

So the solution is as follows: If we disregard the condition of “love thy neighbor as thyself,” which we must bring to the world, then people begin to hate us to the degree of our neglect of this condition. They want to see us carry out this commandment and teach it to them.

If we show them that we observe this condition and that we are prepared to be their teacher, we will see that any nation of the world is prepared to be our student. This is a part of nature, there is nothing that can be done about it. This preparedness is enrooted in them, and the only thing that is missing is our confidence and spiritual height. We must rise to the level of love thy neighbor as thyself and teach it to the other nations. Teach them to love instead of teaching them to live.

The world does not need anything else-—only this knowledge, this ability to be together properly interconnected between all of them.

But instead we teach others how to live, we get in their business: sciences, art, culture, even though none of it essentially is our business. And this is why they do not like us, do not want us, put pressure on us, persecute us. This is how this entire system of forces works; in fact, they push us away subconsciously: “Go, take care of your business.”

If, from the moment of arrival in Israel, we were to take care of our business, work on attaining the degree of loving thy neighbor and enlightenment of mankind—all the nations would become our loyal students. And it is not too late to begin.
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From KabTV’s “Babylon Yesterday and Today” 9/24/14

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Europe Is Shaken

Laitman_421_01In the News (The Wall Street Journal): “European government officials have been ‘deluding’ themselves that the crisis was over and the eurozone would recover, said Charles Wyplosz, professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute Geneva. … ‘What we see now is the revelation that the situation in the eurozone is very precarious,’ he said. ‘We are sitting on a powder keg… .’

“Critics have long warned that a sustainable common currency requires something more—a political and fiscal union that puts Europe’s collective financial muscle at the service of its weaker members.”

“The Eurozone is a major threat to the global economy, the region, whose share in the world gross product is the fifth part of moves to stagnation and deflation,” writes The Economist

“Against the background of the general instability in the world economy the internal problems of Europe such as poor demographics, problematic labor markets and big debts, risking to bring down its economy, and with it create serious problems for the whole world.” (Source: CypLive)

My Comment: You must start with re-educating people; only in accordance with their level of awareness of the need for true integration, unification of the peoples of the continent, is a peaceful solution to the crisis possible.
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Subtleties Of The Mutual Cooperation Between The Parts Of The Common Soul

laitman_423_01Torah, “Leviticus” (Acharei Mot), 18:9: The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or the daughter of thy mother, whether born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover.

This is about a system of mutual cooperation between the male and the female parts of the general vessel (Kli).

Every part of the vessel of receiving is of a female attribute. The male attribute is the attribute of bestowal that cannot connect with the female attribute (the desire to receive) if they both stem from incorrect connections between them.

Thus, the prohibition of “The nakedness of thy sister… thou shalt not uncover” refers to the fact that it is impossible for these two parts to connect when there is no Light of Hassadim in it. That is the clothing, the dressing on the Light of Hochma.

At least twenty attributes of each Light and their names are clarified in Talmud Eser Sefirot (The Study of the Ten Sefirot) since it is very difficult to explain. However, we must understand that we are in this world only in order to work on the correction of the soul.

Now, on the current level of our evolution, we have entered the system called this world, and we must exist in it for a while and perform certain actions, and then move on.

The Torah speaks only about the corrections that we must perform while being on the level of this world when we feel ourselves inside a body, by corporeal means. The Torah doesn’t speak about the rest of the huge round we must undergo and about the other parts of our path.

When we speak about this world or about our world, we refer to our current state, and to what we think and feel now. It is because our world is a certain condition. We are placed in a certain block that was shattered into time, place, motion, and so forth, and we must perform certain actions on ourselves while living in it.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 3/19/14

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Movie Tickets Instead Of Bread

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What happens to a person when he enters a theater and becomes impressed by its special atmosphere? Where do his daily thoughts and worries go?

Answer: It is a known fact that big fish eat small fish. So if a person watching events on stage experiences a much greater emotion than all his other emotions, then he forgets all his worries.

During the great depression in the US during the 1930s, people would buy movie tickets instead of bread. The film was more important than food because it evoked great emotions in them. They forgot about themselves for the duration of the movie and did not need bread.

Question: Why is it so important for a person to forget about themselves for a couple of hours?

Answer: It gives them unlimited fulfillment. Bread can fill one’s stomach, but while eating it, the person will be swallowing each piece with tears, suffering because he is poor and miserable. This way he does not become free from the difficulties and the problems that life brings. He worries about his family, wife, children, his household, and sees how helpless and poor he is.

But when he goes to the theater and experiences the life of a king in a castle, which is so distant from his own life, he is prepared to pay for this experience. He identifies with the protagonists and feels like they are equal. He spends two hours in a magical world. Consumed with the performance, the viewer ceases to exist; he becomes a sponge that absorbs everything that goes on the stage.

Question: But where does his own life go during these two hours?

Answer: His own life disappears and he feels like he exists in a wondrous dream. In reality, our current life is also a dream… But this is a whole other play.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 5/22/14

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Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What is the attitude of the wisdom of Kabbalah to the modern development of the world? Towards what is the world advancing? Will there be an end to the situation that we call the “crisis”?

Answer: The translation of the word “crisis”” from Greek means, a new birth, rather than the destruction of the old. Basically, destruction of the old means that the new already exists. It has appeared, but we have yet to discover it.

How can we pass through this state of the birth of a new world comfortably, rapidly, and pleasantly?

We have always developed with the help of the ego that has consistently pushed us by way of all the social structures until we have now reached a state in which we have totally lost the desire to evolve. Space exploration, the development of nature, and a wide range of scientific studies have all gradually waned.

For the first time in human history, we feel that our ego has completely failed us.

The world is sinking into nihilism, into lack of activity, and into an absence of desire to create anything. We see that even with the best intentions, everything that we do ultimately acts against us. The world around us doesn’t make us happy and doesn’t provides us with pleasant situations. We don’t want to bring children into the world or establish families, nor do we see anything good about the future. And all this is because our ego has exhausted itself, and we no longer have any motivation to advance.

So, what is next?

The wisdom of Kabbalah reveals the whole picture of reality to us. It says that at present, we are at a crossroad in history where we must change our egoistic nature from reception to bestowal. This means changing our nature into one that is altruistic. We must come to realize the eternal Biblical principle, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And so through a new covenant between us, we begin to experience a new picture of reality. We begin to attract the positive forces of nature because we ourselves create a positive society from ourselves.

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains how to do this, so our task is to study this science.

Throughout all the thousands of years of its existence, the wisdom of Kabbalah has been the inheritance of only a small handful of people, the Kabbalists, who developed it from generation to generation. For many years this hidden science flowed within humanity like a small stream, although many scientists and philosophers: Newton, Leibnitz, Pico della Mirandola, and others, investigated it.

Plato and Aristotle took the basis of their knowledge from the wisdom of Kabbalah. The 16th century German philosopher, Johannes Reuchlin, wrote a great work, De Arte Cabalistica (On the Art of the Kabbalah). This is to say that the wisdom of Kabbalah has been known to scientists, and yet, it didn’t go beyond their circle.

In our time, it has been revealed to everyone because it must explain to us how we will attain mutual connection between us.

The wisdom of Kabbalah says that our world is integrally connected as an analog system in which all parts are connected to each other. From our daily work we discover that this world is an absolute closed system. The still, vegetative, animate and speaking levels of nature are connected to each other and are found together as a single complex.

If this is indeed so, we need to reach complete harmony in the connection between us in order to reach a good and beautiful state.

How can harmony like this be reached? For this we must develop a good connection. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the moment we begin with the right circuits of interaction, we will immediately feel how we attract a higher positive energy onto ourselves. This will not be the negative egoistic power that exists in our world and in which everything is based upon opposition and blows, but its opposite. This is a positive energy that fills, supplies, strengthens, and connects us to each other and creates a single whole.

This general harmony will be like the unified power of nature, the great global system, this sphere within which we exist.

The general crisis, which is in fact a product of the disharmony between nature and humanity, will then disappear. We will feel the universe absolutely differently, as eternal and whole. We will merit that eternal and complete existence and our world with its ego will begin to gradually disappear from our senses.

I hope that the present generation will understand what opportunities are in our hands, and how we can truly overcome the crisis in a good and beautiful way. If we are able to do this, we will reach the better, higher state that is intended for humanity.
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From an interview with the television agency, NTV 6/20/14

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