New Life #392 – The Good Force And The Evil Force
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

Summary

Question: All the religions present the world as being dominated by two forces: the force of good and the force of evil. That is how it feels to the common man. It seems to him that good and evil forces are at work on him. What is the good force that does everything good and what is the evil force that brings all the troubles?

Many dream of there being only one force in the world, the force of good, and generally don’t understand why the evil force exists. This split, the constant struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness, between destruction and construction, accompanies us all through life. Why is there a conflict between these two forces?

Answer: There is no conflict. We just think that good and evil forces exist, but there are no evil and good forces in nature. It is true that there are opposing forces: plus and minus, attraction and repulsion, light and darkness.

Without the two opposing forces, life could not exist, there would be no metabolism within the living body, there would be no connection between fundamental particles or between bodies in space, which connect them into a single whole.

Life is always based on the clash between forces and flows according to the “middle line” that connects them. Two opposing forces operate, and from the balance between them the next phase of a new life is born.

In other words, the opposing forces that exist within matter and create a particular harmony between them. So from the electrons and positrons, from the opposing forces that exist within the atom, whole atoms are built that become connected together into molecules through attraction. And within the molecules, the opposing forces can even determine what is good and what is harmful to the connection between them. So they attract, take in and absorb the materials that are beneficial to them and emit the harmful materials. That is how metabolism happens, life and evolution begin.

All of this happens through the correct integration between the two opposing forces. Without this, there is no development and no life. And without this, our universe could not evolve on the inanimate level and especially not on the vegetative level. In plants, there is a more complex integration of the opposing forces and on the animate level it is an even more complex integration.

A complex scrutiny of the definition of good and evil on all levels happens in the human brain and perception. Our intellect is based on a constant scrutiny of the struggle between the opposing forces and on the search for a form of connection that can bring maximal benefit.

It is not possible to use one force without the second force; it is possible only in the integration between them. That is how life is constructed. On the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate, this system works and develops excellently.

If sometimes we see natural disasters, this is only because we measure them with respect to us. However, in fact, the entire universe, the world, the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature advance under the influence of the positive and negative forces that operate between them and promote their evolution.

All is good until we reach the humans. The two forces of good and evil, as we call them, are operable even on humanity. If we were to become aware of the program of nature and would protect the balance between the positive and negative forces, we would live in peace and quiet.

The problem is humanity has freedom of choice. They choose the balance between the positive and negative forces themselves, according to their desire. Here the origin of our ruined nature is revealed; it is because we make decisions more in favor of what is pleasant and comfortable for us instead of making the right decision.

We are more interested in what is profitable than in truth. So we begin to pave a curved path that doesn’t pass through the middle between the negative and positive force that should be equal in the correct integration between them to promote evolution. Instead, we constantly tend in the direction of what is comfortable to us at the expense of others.

After all, all of us are a part of integral nature and we need to maintain a general harmony with the world of the still, vegetative, and animate, evolving along with nature in the same direction. If, together with freedom of choice, we were to protect the balance between the two forces, the harmony between them, we would evolve correctly.

We would not allow ourselves to use the forces of nature more than we need for living in harmony between us and with the environment. Our lives would become easier and peaceful. We would get what is imperative for our existence from nature, and we would use the rest of the power for our internal development.

All of the problems of humanity started because we began to produce more than what is required for life. This is the critical point from which humanity began to self-destruct. From then, we departed from the balance of forces and began to turn them according to the desire of our ego.

This is the general picture: there is a positive force, a negative force, and we, humans, together with our egoism, are found between them. If we were to use these two forces to balance our lives and the ego that erupts in us, we would utilize them only for our internal spiritual growth; we would then rise to the next level, called the speaking level.

Our material lives, meaning life within our bodies on the animate level, with all that is required for our existence, food and family, would remain below, in a balanced form, in the state in which they need to be. And we would use our egoism to bring the two opposing forces into a balance between and to rise to a spiritual level, to spiritual life.
From KabTV’s “New Life #392 – The Good Force And The Evil Force,” 6/3/14

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Preparation for the Lesson

Writings of Rabash, Vol. 3, Article 27

Writings of Rabash, Vol. 2, Article 7

Shamati #4, “What Is the Reason for the Heaviness One Feels When Annulling Before the Creator in the Work” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Mutual Guarantee” 

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Come and Join the Unity

[#202226]
From Twitter, 2/16/17

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Question: In the writings of “The Last Generation,” Baal HaSulam explains thirty million years of the development of planet Earth, cooling, warming, and so on. On the one hand, Kabbalists don’t talk about time and, on the other hand, that is what he wrote. What does he mean by the words, “thirty million years”?

Answer: Baal HaSulam means that within our sensations, in pulses, in the reflection of time, such conditions like these were not created all at once; they were built through a process of contrasting actions, warmth and cold, plus and minus, until they reached a common denominator.

As a result, in the depths of the earth in a raging fire all of the elements of the periodic table boil , and on the top we live quietly on the thin crust that separates us from the seething hell below.  And it all depends on that thin crust.

Question: Before Baal HaSulam, there wasn’t even on Kabbalist who described these processes?  

Answer: Yes, but this doesn’t mean that they didn’t know about it. It is just that they couldn’t express it in language until then. Since Baal HaSulam lived in the 20^th century when we began correcting ourselves and the world began moving toward the completion of correction, a language accessible to our understanding appeared.
[200322]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/14/16

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Torah, Deuteronomy 16:18: You shall set up judges and law enforcement officials for yourself in all your cities that the Lord, your God, is giving you, for your tribes, and they shall judge the people [with] righteous judgment.

Question: What is the role of the overseers?

Answer: The entire Torah speaks about the way to rise above our egoistic nature and to become an altruist with love of the creatures and through them with love of the Creator.

If I want to change, I need overseers, assistants, and teachers who would help me to rise above myself.

The judges, help, persuade, and pressure me; that is, they do everything they can because I have become my own enemy since egoism begins to manifest within me and I relate to it as an enemy. In order to cope with it, I need a powerful environment.

Therefore, it is written: set up judges, overseers, and helpers for yourself at all the gates through which you enter and exit, ascend to the Creator and descend from Him, by the degrees of the spiritual ladder according to the level of bestowal, love of others, and so on. You must regulate all of it and hold it in your hands.

Comment: This contradicts material logic that you personally set up supervisors for yourself and they are not placed above you by someone else!

Answer: The fact is that this is a voluntary path where a person builds himself. Of course, he asks for help from above, turns to the Creator, the positive force of nature, because he himself is totally negative, but he does this independently.

If he understands that everything depends on the correct environment, then he needs to build the environment himself. He does it with the help of the upper force, but through his efforts, understanding, and prayer.

The gates that “the Lord, your God, is giving you” is the level of entry and exit: whether you fit the level of bestowal, love, and connection and to what extent you advance in being similar to the Creator. This is your idea, your goal, and your star. This is how you should move forward.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 8/24/16

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Torah, Deuteronomy 19:11 – 19:13: But if a man hates his fellow, lies in wait for him, rises up against him, and strikes him mortally, and he flees to one of these cities, the elders of his city shall send and take him from there and deliver him into the hand of the avenger of the blood that he may die. And you shall not pity him, but you shall abolish [the shedding of] the blood of the innocent from Israel, and it will be good for you.

If a person’s desires are revealed on the level of intentional egoistic actions when he wants to harm and even to murder some desire, he needs a completely different correction than when he uses the anti-spiritual desire unintentionally.

We are not talking about the desire, but about the intention with which the desire is used. If any of the intentions on the desires of a person operate this way, then this intention must be killed, i.e., eradicated from the incorrect manifestation of its activities. This is its correction.

If the anti-spiritual desire was unintentional, then it had no intention. Then a person should attach a correct intention for bestowal, love, and connection to it.

If this desire is egoistic with a coarse intention for yourself, you need to kill this desire first and only then “give birth” to a new intention. It is written in the Torah that it must be done by the judges. You have no right to kill anything and anyone, neither desire, nor intention. A desire can’t be killed at all, only an intention, and it works only through the judges.

In other words, you need to create a system of judges within you and through it judge yourself and then decide which desires with the intention for your own sake should die, meaning must be eradicated, and which desires are just neutral, without anti-altruistic intention.

Desires with the neutral intention should be corrected and desires with the egoistic intention need to first be destroyed and then a correct one added. 

This is called a revival of the dead souls. Moreover, this action can happen within a person at any degree and not necessarily in what is called the end of days.

When we concentrate on the correct attitude toward everything and understand that these are just egoistic desires that should be turned into altruistic ones by changing the intention from for my own sake to for the sake of others, then we don’t have any problems at all. We just want to know how we can change the intention, and the desires remain unchanged.

They should manifest in us according to the ability to restore the correct intention on them, and therefore these desires are hidden. However, once we receive the ability to change the intention from reception to bestowal, they are revealed gradually. The question is only how we connect to the source of the force that corrects our intentions.

Question: Does it mean that the correction of the intention still comes from the Creator? Can’t I correct it myself?

Answer: No, our goal is to raise a request to become altruists so for each desire instead of the intention for my own sake, we would have the intention for the sake of others and through them for the Creator. After all, the Creator is a collection of everything that is outside of me. Such is our work.
[201440]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 9/7/16

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Question: Is a Kabbalist living in the year 2017 able to distinguish between scientific work and the fabrication and distortions of pseudoscience?

Answer: For a Kabbalist, there is no special relationship with the science of our world. The wisdom of Kabbalah is indeed a science, but a science about the upper world!

The upper world projects onto our world, which reflects what is happening in the spiritual world. However, there is no clear connection between the science of our world and the wisdom of Kabbalah because material life is dominated by egoistic laws and in Kabbalah completely different laws rule. 

Today the science of our world has reached its limit, an impasse, in all fields of development except for technology. Therefore, the next stage in the development of science can only be through studying the wisdom of Kabbalah. In Kabbalah, a person changes himself and in this way his science is changed, meaning the attainment of space, the world. If a person doesn’t change himself, then within those limitations he exists today, his comprehension and perception are limited.

So I suppose that materialistic science will not continue to develop. It could be that it will continue to develop to a certain extent, but only until it fills all the human boundaries. Technology will develop further and further. It is possible to assume its developing for many years ahead, but it is not clear how this will benefit humanity.

People are becoming disappointed at a rate faster than the production of new “toys” because these do not take them out of the limits of our world.
[201450]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 1/1/16

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New Life #329 – Patience
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

We are under constant pressure and are impatient most of the time. Why is this, how does this state influence the connections between us, and how can we reach a more relaxed environment and be more patient?

We measure patience and lack of patience according to the disturbances from others. Our ego is growing and as a result, we have become impatient. Whoever interferes with my enjoyment, get lost!

Israelis are especially impatient because they have very big egos. They want immediate results.

In the next generation, impatience will grow even more. Life will become very difficult with social problems and health problems. Due to impatience, the family unit is collapsing and people don’t want to get married or have children.

It’s possible to relate to someone with patience only if he is a very close friend, when we are connected as one.
When I feel good, people in society are loving, I am not pressed for time. I have patience, I feel free.

Try to develop a little love for the person in front of you, and then you will see that you have patience for him. When you work on a team on some project, put the pressure on the side and try to develop a warm relationship with them. If you put the building of good relations before the success of the project, you will succeed in the project as well.

In the next generation, there will be a difficult problem with patience. People won’t be able to stand each other. We must work on correcting man’s nature, providing education concerning the building of mutual connection.

Patience is the standard. Delaying gratification is better, putting something different in front of you and turning your attention to it.

If a person is impatient, it is preferable to have a few friends join him to share the tension and stress.

All solutions will come through the connection with others, through developing the ability to look at life through various viewpoints.
[136066]
From KabTV’s “New Life #329 – Patience,” 12/11/13

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Preparation for the Lesson

Writings of Rabash, Vol. 1, “What to Look for in the Assembly of Friends”

The Book of Zohar, Selected Excerpts — “Spiritual Degree,” “There’s No Awakening Above Before there is Awakening Below”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “The Mutual Guarantee” 

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