Audio Version Of The Blog – 02.26.17

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My Thoughts On Twitter, 2/26/17

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Without a struggle with its opposite, any phenomenon becomes cancerous, and thus kills others and itself.

In nature, development is based on constant conflict between opposites. And this also applies to liberals and conservatives.

The struggle between the old and the new: Trump’s opponents cast spells on him. Quite typical for opponents of the new world.

Self-governance of society is possible if it has 2 forces: rejection & attraction. We’re only governed by one: egoism with no free will.

By working to unite despite the rejection, we invoke a force of attraction above the rejection within us, and “Love covers all sins.”

Reminiscent of the Soviet dictatorship and Nazism – Leftists and liberals prove they support freedom of speech only on paper.

Besides the human level, at all levels of nature – still, vegetative, animate – life is sustained by the interaction of opposite forces.

I was pleased to see my opponents at the World Kabbalah Convention. In a healthy organism, opposites are needed to create balance!

Most American Jews are against Trump since they evaluate everything based on personal gain, not the benefit of their people or Israel.
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From Twitter, 2/26/17

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Why Can’t We Know The Future?

Laitman_066_03Comment: For centuries humanity has been interested in forecasts of the future, what tomorrow has in store for us.

My Response: Why? After all, knowing the future doesn’t make it easier to live it. If they were to tell us now that in a particular amount of time these or those events would happen, all of our thoughts would be tied to that date.

Question: What motivates people to decipher the writings of Nostradamus?

Answer: On one hand, a person wants to know the future on a global scale; that is natural. But regarding a person’s own future, I think it is worthwhile not knowing. If the future is hidden from a person, it means that it must be hidden. Not even the wisdom of Kabbalah reveals this. It brings a person to a state where the boundary between life and death is erased.

Basically, what is death? It is the animal component of human consciousness. When this part disappears, the mind continues to exist anyway.

Comment: All of the sources point toward the future, for instance, “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid….” (Isaiah 11:6), or “It will be on that day…and the Creator extends His hand again and again.”

My Response: This is not speaking about a specific day, but about a time toward which we are heading today, tomorrow, or in another hundred to two hundred years.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/1/16

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Eleven Years After Arosa, Part 6

laitman_752_3Life That Never Ends

Question: Does the world develop only according to the program embedded in it or is there a place for chance?

Answer: There is nothing accidental in our development. The beginning of creation and its end are linked together, as it is written, “The end of the action lies in the initial thought.” Therefore, there can’t be any mistakes or imprecisions in the process of evolution. Statistic and finances use approximate calculations and projections, but it is only because we don’t know the exact facts.

In nature there is nothing approximate; everything is uniquely determined by the final state that sets the beginning. A person moves forward stepping into darkness and not knowing what awaits him. But this is impossible in the evolution of nature. On the contrary, the end is predetermined and therefore how to reach it is known.

The example that demonstrates this is the electric eel that catches prey with electric shocks of 500 volts. It would seem that this property had to be developed gradually in the course of evolution.

But if the eel’s original charge was not 500 volts, but 1, 5, or 100, it wouldn’t help it catch prey since 500 volts is required! So how was this quality developed in him, if the small voltage wouldn’t bring any benefit?

However, “the end of the action lies in the initial thought”; this rule is valid always and everywhere. Therefore, nature unmistakably moves forward, but this is the way of suffering due to the blows that force the transition to the new state. All living creatures and cells are forced to annul themselves and die, but there is no loss.

In nature, the law of altruism operates, according to which every creature annuls itself for the sake of the general system. It happens automatically, not consciously. Only when we reach the human level do we face a problem.

After all, a person must comply with these laws of altruistic connection and cancel his egoism of his own volition. This way he becomes similar to the upper force, the Creator.

Life is connection, and a person aspires to this connection as to the essence of life. Due to his annulment for the sake of connection with others, like a cell in the healthy body, he begins to feel and reveal the upper force. In this way he reaches an equivalence of form with the Creator.

Therefore, the Creator initially created the desire to enjoy and shattered it so that a person would have the opportunity to renounce his egoism and become similar to his maker, the upper degree. The more we annul ourselves, renouncing our egoism, the higher we climb reaching equivalence with the higher level.

By killing our egoistic desire, we become free from it and can rise to the next degree. The one who is capable of it, reveals that life is precisely in annulment and in reaching the higher and higher existence. There is no death, there is self-sacrifice for the sake of connection. Unification is the main goal and the idea of life.

Therefore, the shattering was necessary. The recognition of our shattering is the foundation for implementing correction, i.e., unification.

I annul myself for the sake of existence on the higher degree where I continue to live. After all, my idea, my desire, and everything done by me exists there, as if I would have continued to live in my children, and they in their children, and so on. The one who kills his current egoism receives the next degree—the eternal continuation.
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From the 3d part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/11/17, Lesson on the Topic, “Mismah Arosa,” (Arosa Document)

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Why Do People Shy Away From The Wisdom Of Kabbalah?

laitman_231_01“But the words of the Torah are sublime secrets” (The Book of Zohar, “Beha’alotcha,” 58). What does “sublime secrets” mean? There actually are no secrets. We just are not ready or don’t want to discover them. The secret is with respect to us. The whole world is open!

The upper world, the world of forces, is here. Supposedly, we control it and do what we want in it. But in fact, we have no access to it. It is not possible for us to manipulate the higher forces because our inner characteristics are very limited. If we were to expand them, we would begin to exist within an entirely different world.

Comment: Often we “accuse” the wisdom of Kabbalah of being mysticism, but, in fact, all religions are based upon mysticism.

My Response: People are accustomed to accusing others regarding something in which they are themselves immersed. But the wisdom of Kabbalah speaks only about a method through which a person can discover himself individually and not in any other way, and it is not something easy.

It is natural for us to accuse the wisdom of Kabbalah of being mysticism, of fortunetelling, and so forth! After all, there is nothing more hated in our world than the wisdom of Kabbalah because it says that we must correct our nature, change ourselves. Who would want to do that?

Comment: But it is being done in the name of a higher purpose: attainment of the Creator!

My Response: The simple person doesn’t see that and doesn’t want it. For him it is better to shut his eyes like a child.

Question: What is the difference between what the wisdom of Kabbalah tells a person: “Change your nature and rise to the level of the Creator!” and what religions say: “Perform some actions in this world and you will assure yourself of the next world this way!” After all, in both cases, isn’t the person performing actions to gain the next world?

Answer: Certainly, the person is performing the same actions according to his egoistic nature. But to become equal to the Creator, a person must turn himself inside out. This is an absolutely different approach, so few agree with it.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/14/16

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Spiritual Roots Of Corporeal Objects

laitman_746_01Question: What is the spiritual root of an object in our world? Does the ocean have a spiritual root? Where is it and what is an ocean?

Answer: In the spiritual world, there is no question of “where?” The ocean is. It is about certain attributes, many forces that are interconnected.

Water symbolizes the attribute of bestowal (Bina), in which different animals (Malchut) appear. This means that Malchut rises to Bina and the mutual cooperation between them brings it life, by obliging Bina to turn to Keter and receive Light.

The Light spreads in Bina and performs certain actions in it, and thus marine life is created in the seas, in rivers, etc. Everything stems from Bina and then gradually descends to Malchut, which means that all the creatures gradually come out of the water and unto the land and begin to multiply, to spread, and to live on it.

We learn about the mutual cooperation between Bina and Malchut as Tzimtzum Bet (the second restriction).

The mutual cooperation of the forces creates this picture of our world until a person reaches spiritual attainment and then he looks at the world and sees which forces are behind the earthly objects, how they manage the world, and how certain spiritual attributes affect the upper roots.

Question: Why are there mountains, plains, and valleys in our world? What is their spiritual root?

Answer: According to the wisdom of Kabbalah everything stems from the attributes of two forces: Malchut and Bina or the Light of Hochma and the Light of Hassadim, the attributes of reception and bestowal. The mutual states that are created between them reflect and have such implications on our world.

There is no need for anything else but these two forces. Together the attributes of bestowal and receiving create the whole variety of attributes, the types of characters, and the objects on all the levels of nature: still, vegetative, animate, and speaking.

There is nothing in nature but these two opposite forces: an electron and a positron, a plus and a minus.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/14/16

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New Life 480 – Don’t Fix A Rusty Engine

New Life 480 – Don’t Fix A Rusty Engine
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Question: The issue of minimum wage has been on the news very often lately. This is a matter of great concern not only in Israel but in other countries as well.

We would like to examine this issue not so much from an economic perspective but from a social perspective. After all, the minimum wage in a country can tell us a lot about the society and it raises many problems that are related to the social relations in the country.

As an employment advisor, I see how the middle class is gradually falling to the category of minimum wage earners. Generally speaking, this refers to nearly one-third of the workers who receive minimum wage or a bit more. It is close to a million people, including people who have higher education: teachers, young architects, social workers, etc. Today many find it hard to make ends meet because of the low wages they receive.

There are many arguments about this issue in Israel, including the moral and social aspects. Is there a point in enforcing artificial equality? Or is it better to maintain the laws of the free market in every area?

Economists have not reached an agreement on this issue either. Some claim that high minimum wage increases unemployment and weakens the economy. Others believe that these claims are baseless. Seven Noble Prize winners, for example, deny any relation between unemployment and minimum wage and claim that raising minimum wage is beneficial for the economy.

What is your opinion on this matter?

Answer: I deal with a different kind of systems. They are controlled by different laws than those acceptable in modern society. These are the laws of nature, not the artificial laws of this world that are enforced as a result of egoistic rivalry.

Therefore, I find it hard to enter the rotten structure of society founded on “dog eat dog” and every man is despised foe. In such circumstances it is impossible to give advice on specific issues since the whole system is hopeless. The only thing we can do is to get rid of it and to create something new.

On the other hand, we have already seen how to destroy the old world without building anything better. After all, the basis remains the same egoistic basis.

Today we are subject to the market economy that exists according to its own rules. This means, as a rule, an employer would like to pay an employee nothing for 24 hours of work a day without any breaks or vacations. The employee, on the other hand, in general, does not want to work except to receive a salary in his bank account and not a minimum wage but a maximum wage.

Under such circumstances, society exists on the account of the competitive potential of its members: everyone tries to attain as much as possible by games of power, negotiations, agreements, and many other factors.

For example, between an employer and its workers, there are labor laws, authorities, trade unions, workers’ committees, etc., but all the parties involved still want to benefit from what is going on and no one wants it to end.

After all, companies, groups, and unions have an interest, and even if they fight for the rights of the workers and lower classes trying to achieve minimum wage, pensions, stipends, and other benefits for them, they still think only about themselves. These people hold good jobs and receive their share, or in other words, operate egoistically.

Therefore, there is no one we can demand correction from. It is impossible to correct only part of the mechanism. If an engine is totally rusty, we can change a certain part with a part made of gold, perfect in size and in every parameter, but this will not help. The fixed part may even disrupt the whole system and even more.

I remember when I was a student, a girl decided to clean part of the window in the dorms where we lived. As a result, we discovered we then discovered we had to clean the whole wall of huge windows. And then when the sunlight entered the room, it turned out that the whole room needed a good cleaning.

In short, if we intend to fix something, we need to take whole system into account. It is an integral system in which all the parts are mutually connected; it is impossible to isolate the minimum wage as the factor for economic success. We have to approach the whole system integrally and give it a good shake, or, in other words, to take it apart and put it back together again differently. No individual fixes will help the whole picture.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 480 – Don’t Fix A Rusty Engine,” 12/23/14

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 02.26.17

Preparation for the Lesson

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Writings of Rabash, Vol. 3, Article 645 

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Shamati #57, “Will Bring Him as a Burned Offering to His Will”

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