Audio Version Of The Blog – 01.07.15

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The Upper Mind That Is Concealed In Nature

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: You say that the Israeli nation was chosen by the Creator in order to help all of humanity get closer to Him. But we don’t live in ancient times or in the Middle Ages anymore and don’t see that the modern world needs the Creator. Only religious people speak about the Creator, not people in the ordinary world, and no one feels the need for Him.

Answer: The Creator is equivalent to nature. The whole huge system of nature, the immense power that includes and sustains all of creation is called the Creator. This definition is totally different from the common religious definition.

The problem is that because our mind and our feelings are so limited, we cannot recognize the fact that the upper force also has feelings, understanding, a plan, and organizes the process that leads to a certain goal.

We picture this force as a still force, like the force of gravity that simply pulls and that’s all. We think that only us humans have minds and thoughts and nature doesn’t.

But today there are many scientific publications that speak about the upper force that develops all of matter. This force has a plan and a goal that are predetermined, and it advances us according to this plan. Our situation is no coincidence and nothing in the world happens by chance.

Even ordinary evolution, which seems to us as arbitrary, is in fact predetermined. Each time different desires connect and there is a struggle between them, they are carrying out the precise plan that is predetermined. The only thing is that we don’t know it, but today scientists are already beginning to speak about it.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/28/14

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A House Open To All People

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe people of Israel have a task, a unique mission to become a house open to all people who want to discover the Creator. Therefore, we must build such a society from our people and become like a wonderful, immense cup that is ready and able to contain everyone. We must open our hands so that everyone who wants this, can come and be included within the embrace of our arms and join us.

This is because the people of Israel are not like others who became a people thanks to a shared living space and a shared history. In contrast to this, the Jewish people were established according to its role, its mission, and in accord with its future goal.

So we must prepare a place for all of humanity so that it will be possible for them to come and learn to understand why we exist, why we are alive, and why we suffer.

This is particularly important in our times, when humanity is sliding vigorously and quickly towards an abyss. It is specifically because of this that the role of the people of Israel is so important.

If we don’t hasten to carry out our mission and are late in our development, then we invite blows upon ourselves. Those same forces that we could develop within ourselves, but don’t want to, are pressing upon us negatively.

This is like a little child who doesn’t want to learn and with this he compels his parents to pressure him, and he thinks that they are bad. They actually are not bad, they simply want him to succeed. That is how the forces of nature have acted in every moment of our history.

History is a very precise and clear program and if we don’t carry out the obligations regarding ourselves and humanity at every moment, the mission that is not carried out begins to put pressure on us and forcefully moves us forward.

This negative force can be revealed in the form of problems, wars, expulsion from the country [Israel], annihilation, and a Holocaust. Everything depends on how much we delay in carrying out our mission with respect to the schedule that is determined by the program of creation.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/28/14

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The Force Of Good And The Force Of Evil, Part 3

laitman_759Suffering Due to a Lack of Balance

Question: Why does an evil force exist at all? Was it impossible to make things so life would be all good without any pain and torment?

Answer: The pain and torment testify to some kind of lack: a lack of oxygen, cold, heat, or nourishment. We suffer from a lack of fulfillment, wholeness, and balance. This suffering obliges us to remove the imbalance, to attain what is missing to complete ourselves.

We always feel pain; even the hand that rests comfortably on the table endures the pressure of the table. But if the suffering is not great, it helps us to feel objects and use them, which is to say, to react to the surrounding world.

But there are such reactions that have already crossed the threshold of pleasant feelings and begin to be felt as true suffering and pain. Pain is also a useful phenomenon. Pain protects us, obligates us to flee from danger, and forces us to heal our illnesses. There isn’t just evil in the world; everything depends upon how we relate to it.

Question: I will give an example: Yesterday when I was not around, they smashed the window of my car and stole a bag with money and documents. How can I remove this lack and imbalance? What can I do to become whole and balanced?

Answer: This is an excellent example. You are certainly suffering, and this testifies to your illness. Our whole society is sick.

You still don’t know that in this way they are showing you that you are sick: every citizen of this nation and all of us together are sick. And now you should try to find a remedy.

Don’t think that this happened for no reason like a little child who drops a cup and claims that it broke by itself. For every phenomenon there is a reason and it is necessary to learn it so that it won’t come back again.

Question: Does it follow that from the start we are condemned with illnesses if the world was created with weaknesses and pain?

Answer: No, we ourselves create the diseases. The pain is given only to show us where wholeness is required. If I put my hand into a fire and I don’t feel the pain, it will be burned. This pain is useful.

Suffering becomes bad not because it hurts me but because I don’t react correctly to the pain. This evil is found only in me, and not in some additional place somewhere.

If a lion wants to devour me, it is impossible to blame him for being evil. He acts according to his nature, his internal instincts. He became hungry and I looked quite tasty to him. It is not the lion that is bad; rather, it is I, because I put myself in a situation where he could attack me.

So it is worthwhile for me to stay away from this evil so that I won’t be hurled into bad situations. I won’t travel to a jungle anymore or I will put the lion in a cage.

There isn’t any evil! If I make a mistake once, then this is a lesson for me. If I repeat the same mistake, then this is stupidity.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 6/3/14

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Mental Exercise That Replaces Physical Exercise

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (DailyMail): “A new research study suggests that just thinking of exercising can have the same effects as actually hitting the gym, officials say.

“A recent study published in the Journal of Neurophysiology found that simply imagining exercise can tone muscle, delay atrophy, and even make your muscles stronger.

“Researchers at Ohio University, according to the Breitbart News Network, conducted an experiment using two sets of ‘healthy individuals.’

“The researchers wrapped the wrists of one of the sets in a cast and gave them instructions to sit still for 11 minutes, five days a week, for four weeks, and ‘perform mental imagery of strong muscle contractions,’ – or, imagine exercising.

“The other set were not given any instruction.

“The results illustrated that the body and mind are more intertwined than we thought.

“At the end of the four weeks, the participants who engaged in the ‘mental exercise’ were twice as strong as those who didn’t, Breitbart reports.

“Additionally, those participants had a stronger brain because the exercises created stronger neuromuscular pathways.

“Scientists have long known the connections between the brain’s cortex and its ability to control and coordinate muscle movement, according to Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.

“However, the University’s study is the first to prove that the imagery can delay or stop muscle atrophy.”

My Comment: Gradually, we discover the increasingly greater influence of thought, imagination, and intention on the world, until we realize that only thought affects the world and that actions are only to supplement ideas.
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Pangs Of The Chosen People

Laitman_079_01Question: What is the meaning of the concept, “the chosen people,” and where is the place of the Jewish nation in the whole human puzzle? What should we do in order to attain a better life for ourselves and for our children?

Many people associate the concept of the chosen people, with the great suffering the Jewish people have been through throughout history and the fact that they suffered much more than all the other nations. The Holocaust, for example, which symbolizes this uniqueness, shows that it can be revealed in a very negative manner.

What is the role of the Jewish nation in being chosen, and why we do we suffer so much for so long as a result?

Answer: The Jewish nation has suffered throughout history because we refer to human development as advancing toward the revelation of the Creator, and a person only develops under pressure. If the forces that surround him cease to pressure him, he will freeze without motion.

All of our motions stem from our desire to leave an unpleasant state and move to a more comfortable one. This is the reason we feel pressure that pushes us to develop. This pressure is put, to a certain extent, on all levels of nature: the still, vegetative, animate, and especially human beings.

A person must develop more than all the other levels, and therefore feels greater pain than the others: more than the plants, the animals, and the stones. Even stones suffer from the desire to preserve their state. They perceive any change as suffering but on the the still level of nature.

Human beings, of course, suffer more than all the other created beings, and the Jewish nation, which is the most developed nation, suffers more than others as a result. In addition, it has a special role and must develop in order to fulfill it.

This role is above this world, and this the reason that the pressure is so strong. The pressure comes from the upper force, which can be called nature or the Creator, which are one and the same. It is the same force, and it is both the force that we want to reveal and the force that that develops us and sustains this entire world.

At the time of ancient Babylon, a strong desire to see and reveal the Creator awoke in people. Abraham, a wise man who lived in the time of ancient Babylon, gathered a group of students that later became the Jewish nation and guided them by explaining how to fulfill their internal yearning to reveal the Creator.

This is possible only by suppressing our ego and placing a dome of love, unity, and mutual bestowal above it. Thus, we prepare the place for the revelation of the Creator in our connection.

By starting to work on such unity and connection, the Jewish people rose to an even higher level. Every time we succeed in uniting, we discover new horizons, and every time we neglect our mission, we draw even greater sufferings onto us. This distinguishes us from the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature, and even other human beings; we suffer more than everyone else because we are more developed.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 12/28/14

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From The Last Exile To The Last Redemption

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe Torah, “Leviticus” 20:1 – 20:5: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, and to the children of Israel, you shall say: Any man of the children of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among Israel, who gives any of his offspring to Molech, shall surely be put to death; the people of the land shall pelt him with stones. And I will set My attention upon that man, and I will cut him off from amidst his people, because he gave of his offspring to Molech in order to defile My holy ones and to profane My holy Name. But if the people of the land ignore that man when he gives of his offspring to Molech, not putting him to death. I will set My attention upon that man, and upon his family, and I will cut him off, and all who stray after him to stray after Molech, from amidst their people.

A son is our next state. “…who gives any of his offspring to Molech,” means giving it to the ego, which means to allow my next states to develop in the egoistic direction.

Therefore, the prohibition of giving one’s offspring to Molech means that in the current state, you have to prepare your next state so as to focus yourself absolutely clearly and guaranteed to be in the right direction. But if you are wrong and your next level falls into the ego, it is your problem and not the problem of your offspring, of the next state.

Thus, all the responsibility lies on the shoulders of the previous level that prepared itself incorrectly for the ascent, which means that the father is responsible and not the son. When a person is born, he is nothing. What you fill him with—the plans, attributes, qualities, and values—is what he will be.

It says that if people are forgiving with regard to a person who had given his offspring to Molech, the Creator would cut him off and all that go astray after him. This means that if most people believe that in their next states it is preferable to descend into our world, it will be necessary to raise all the desires anew and to correct them. This is very serious work with heavy losses.

This has previously happened in our history and now we are actually in the same state of having fallen from the spiritual path, which is called “giving your offspring to Molech,” and should rise from this fall once again, which means to rise from the last exile to the last redemption.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 4/16/14

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 01.07.15

Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Mutual Guarantee” 

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Talmud Eser Sefirot Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 1, Item 5

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Talmud Eser Sefirot Vol. 6, Part 16, Item 85

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